Hello!

It's been a while since the last patch, and I sure have been busy with new updates and content for High Fantasy Idle. I wanted to share what new features are coming with Demo V2, and also share an update on content as well. If you're part of the HFI discord, this will all be review for you, but if you're not, wow do I have a lot to share. :D Strap in, it's going to be a long one. (TL;DR at the bottom!)

New Evergreen Features

Evergreen Feature 1: Game Profile and Inventory

What is the Game Profile + Inventory?

• The Achievements menu has evolved with a couple new areas: Profile and Inventory. I'll get to the Inventory in a minute
• The Profile page shows everything you can possibly collect and unlock in the game, sorted by categories. If you want more information, you can expand a category to see the subcategories under it. There's also a few totally new things being tracked now, including:
• Max Level Obtained per class, Rebirth Stats Obtained (these now have a hard cap of 183, at least for now), Max Shop Items Obtained and Max Perk Points Obtained
• All of these new things being tracked fill the ultimate progress bar at the top. As the game continues to expand and evolve, many many more things will be added to this Profile to track everything that is possible to collect and unlock in the game. If you get 100%, you get a little gold star beside the progress bar, neat!

Why this feature?

• I got some valuable feedback a while back that it can be hard to know when you are "done" the demo, and your overall progress in HFI in general. The achievement system does a decent job at this, but it's only a fraction of what HFI has to offer

Next up: The Inventory Page!

• My vision for the Inventory page is kind of like a Key Items area. Here, you'll be able to look at specific items obtained through all of the classes, with a quantity and some additional lore not found anywhere else in the game

Right now, it's mostly stuff you have all seen. Down the road though, there will be particularly important items you find (could be on any class, not just Squire!), and they will be placed here. It could be a collection of things that need to be put together, kind of like the Evil Missive, or a little teaser for something to come in a future content update.

Evergreen Feature 2: Perk Loadouts

What are Perk Loadouts?

• Perk loadouts allow you to save up to 3 perk builds for each class! This feature is unlocked via new Researcher content
• Clicking Save will save your current perk build to the loadout slot. Saving when there is already data in a slot will simply overwrite it. This data is tied to your save data
• Once you have saved a loadout and rebirthed, you have two options: you can simply click Load or turn on Autospend. Clicking Load will spend the perk points you currently have up to the point where you either run out of perk points or the loadout is complete. Turning on Autospend will have your perk points automatically spent as you level up and gain more

Why this feature?

• There's been a fair amount of feedback that filling in your perk points every rebirth can be a bit tedious later on in the game, and with more perks coming down the line, this is only going to get more tedious
• I see this feature being useful in two specific ways: 1. If you are early game/mid game and want to save specific builds for specific objectives. 2. If you are endgame and simply want to save a loadout that buys everything as you gain levels

Evergreen Feature 3: Class Swap 

Here it is, the big one.

What is Class Swap?

• Class Swap allows you to swap between classes in HFI and have them all running at once!
• The UI to swap classes is in the center of the menu bar at the top of the screen. Simply click the class icon, and boom you are playing that class
• While you still actively play one class at a time, the other classes are fully running in the background. Autofarm, battles, researching, everything - at full power as well
• Rebirthing will only rebirth the active class you are currently playing, which means the others do not reset and they immediately gain the rebirth stat bonuses without needing to reset themselves
• This means you could be in a situation where for example you need more HP to survive a Squire fight. With Class Swap, you can swap to Farmhand, do a run, rebirth just the Farmhand for more Hardiness, and swap back to Squire in the same run with enhanced max HP!,
• Other systems have been updated for when Class Swap is unlocked, such as the Events panel and Offline Progression. The Events panel displays all events happening regardless of the class being played, and offline progression displays data for all 3 classes at once (as offline progression now happens for all classes with Class Swap unlocked)

Why this feature?

• At this stage of the game, it adds a little bit more complexity into the mix. I have received feedback in the past that HFI is fun but players are wanting more to do. HFI has quite a bit to do, even in its demo stage, but much of it is currently locked away with only being able to play one class at a time. Similar to other idle games, I see each class as its own system you get to unlock that will synergize with the other systems

As the content starts to ramp up (and things potentially become a little tougher) having these options are going to open the door to new strategies! Like I mentioned before, Class Swap is intended to set the stage for future HFI content. I hope people are as excited for this feature as I am.

Still with me? Awesome.

Time to chat about content, and a few other major changes.

What new content is coming in Demo V2?

• All classes will have content up to around level 80. This means Farmhand and Squire will have a bit more content, and Researcher will have way more, haha.
• Farmhand - More shop items, more perks, more story.
• Squire - More shop items, more perks, more story. Completion of Dungeon 3, possibly a little more? :O
• Researcher - More shop items, more perks, more story. More books, and an entirely new research subject.
• This will complete the content for the High Fantasy Idle demo.

Perk rework - Multi point perks!

Why multi-point perks?

• It doesn't feel great to have to wait up to 4 entire levels to get a single passive perk
• You end up sitting on unspent perk points for sometimes quite a while before you can spend anything

With the new multi-point perk system, this means perk levels always cost a single point, minus skill rank ups and permanent ones. This is how it works: (See screenshot for context)

• If a perk cost more than one point in the past, you can now put points into it up to how much it used to cost. (For example, a 2 point perk could be in the state of 0 points spent, 1 point spent, or 2 points spent). Each point spent gives a bonus
• With only one point spent in the perk, this allows you to reach the next perk in the tree. This will greatly increase build diversity and allow new possibilities, especially as the perk trees grow over time
• For permanent perks, they work exactly the same way they did before. So in order to learn one, you have to fully fill all prior perks that eventually connect with it, just like you do today. I didn't want to trivialize the challenge of unlocking a permanent perk with this change,
• This means unless you are saving for a skill up or permanent perk, you will always be able to spend a perk point each time you level up

Squire - Defense + Thorns rework

Why change Defense?

• Defense had really wild swings, where it either didn't do anything meaningful at all or prevented nearly all damage being taken
• Because of this, thorns was in a similar boat. As much as I liked how thorns builds carved their own niche, they were always bad in the end game due to the lack of defense stats

With that, Defense has been changed to Damage Reduction!

• Each point of DR reduces damage taken by 1% flat - this does not apply to poison
• Gaining more DR will always feel meaningful because it'll always reduce a meaningful amount of damage
• For you eagle eyes out there, yes this new DR applies to the DR you gain from training mastery. I wonder if thorns builds will be especially strong in Dungeon 1?

Speaking of thorns, because of the above change thorns also needed a significant change.

• Thorns damage is now based on two things - the Damage Reduction stat and the Armor of Thorns perk (which now has 4 individual ranks cause of the perk rework changes above)
• Each rank of Armor of Thorns improves your thorns damage by 50% of your DR stat, up to 200%
• For example, if you had 20% DR and 3/4 points in Armor of Thorns, this means the enemy would be reflecting 30% of its regular and special attack damage back to itself. If the enemy was dealing 1000 damage, the formula would look like this: (1000 damage * 0.2 DR * 1 .5 from perks) = 300 damage
• This damage is still applied AFTER you take the damage, however...
• Brace for Impact has changed to simply double your DR stat when used. Which means... double thorns damage! DR also does not reduce the damage taken from thorns by enemies! Brace for Impact spam builds eh?

TL;DR and a couple extra things

• Evergreen Feature 1 - Game Profile and Inventory - new UI that shows you all of your progress in HFI and key items
• Evergreen Feature 2 - Perk Loadouts - you can now save perk loadouts and have them autoload in future rebirths
• Evergreen Feature 3 - Class Swap - after unlocking, you can play all three classes at once by hotswapping between them. Rebirth only resets the active class and the other classes see the immediate benefits of the increased rebirth stat
• Content in Demo V2: Content up to level 80, more perks, more shop items, more story, etc. This will mark the end of the demo content
• Multi-point perks and a rework of defense and thorns for Squire
• You can now load save files in the browser version of HFI - apologies on how long this took, it was a tricky issue but it is now resolved!

There's a lot more coming in Demo V2 but this devlog is already very very long haha. Hope you enjoyed this, if you'd like to see more of this kind of thing please let me know! I'm excited to get this patch into people's hands, but more content still needs to be developed for it.