Dev Blog

The Spell Preview is now Live!

All classes now start with a spell from level 1:

• Warden: Spectral Slash - Deal 60% power split between two enemies across or adjacent.
   
• Ranger: Long Arm - Deal 60% power to an enemy preferring enemies in the backrow.
   
• Sage: Word of Fury - Attack an enemy 1-3 times dealing 40% power each time.
   

You may learn two additional spells at level 3 by visiting the newly unlocked Meadows Ruins and completing two quests.

• Healing Spring - Water Element healing spell. Available to all classes. Heals for 100% of your power spread across all friendly targets in your cell

• Fireball - Fire Element damage. Available to all classes. Deals 100% of your power as fire damage

New Build Menu

• You may now pick which item you would like to bring to battle
• You may also use the menu to configure which spells to bring into battle
• This menu's hotkey is "B"

Misc Changes

• Death now collects more gold from you when you die. This is based on your level and how good of gear you have
• Default Weapon Attack damage is now 30% of your power (down from 45% power)
• All Healing Potions have been swapped to Healing Vials. Healing Vials heal for less health
• The Healing Coral daily turn-in now gives you the big Healing Potions which heal for 50 hp
• A new item called "Jug of Water" has been added to most merchants that restores mana out of combat

Known Bugs

• Sometimes your spells will have their animations and damage numbers not render on the enemy. This appears to be purely cosmetic. But more information needs to be collected. Please share your thoughts below.
• The Warden's Spectral Slash seems to not always cleave even when there is a viable target. Is this cosmetic or logical? More information is needed.

Patch Notes
 

0.4.30:

July 17 2021

• Spell Preview Patch is now live!
• See blog post above for details.

0.4.31 - 0.4.32:

July 18 2021

• Healing Coral daily turn in gives you 5 "Healing Potions" per 5 coral, these restore 50hp each! Keep in mind these are the best healing potions in the game, and are not "Healing Vials" which only restore 20hp.
• Improved def/resist mitigation from gear (3 per stat, up to 5 per stat)
• Fixed a bug with spectral slash so it does proper single target damage
• Spectral Slash now costs 30 energy (down from 40)
• Long Arm now deals 60% power (up from 50%)
• Word of Fury now deals 40% power (up from 30%)
• Luck now increases Crit Chance by 5% per point at level 5 (up from 3.75%)
• Death tax amount contributed from equipped items has been lowered in half.

0.4.33:

July 19 2021

• MacOS clients should now be able to patch and enjoy the game!
• All over-world monsters have had their stats adjusted to be similar in difficulty grouped by their levels. No more will a level 4 be harder than a level 5, for example. 
• "Jug of Water" cost increased to 30 gold (up from 20 gold).
• Starting gear from the first few quests of the game now have either +Defense or +Resist in addition to the already existing +Health.
• Completing the Main Story Preview Quest, "A New Beginging" will now reward you with a couple of "Healing Potions" (+50hp).
• The drop rate of "Crystal Modules" for the quest "Fire Shrine I" has been increased slightly.

Dev Notes:  As a result of this patch the game isn't as unforgiving. You are able to pull multiple enemies and survive more often than not. This may make things seem too trivial for those of you who are fully geared or play in groups. But these changes were needed to smooth out the experience for new players.

0.4.34:

July 23 2021

• Abandoned Windmill Expansion
  • There is now a quest that leads you to the Windmill dungeon. You may start it from a patron at the Domhan Inn at level 5.
  • The quest chain rewards you a key to a locked door within the Windmill.
  • Only one person in your party needs the key to unlock the door.
  • Behind the door is a new boss! The boss also drops a new secret rare pet drop!
• Misc Changes:
  • Mana restoring out-of-combat items have had their values adjusted.
  • Healing Spring now has a smaller solo healing value, but maintains a larger group healing value.
• Bug Fixes:
  • Skill Animations in battle should now always show up.
  • Issues with dungeon logging in/out while inside should now be resolved.
  • Various tiles around the Meadows Ruins have had their properties fixed.
  • Hitting space bar on the login screen will no longer clear the username field, and instead let you log in.

Dev Notes:
Thank you everyone for helping me test this Alpha and reporting your findings.
This patch provides some purpose to replaying the Windmill dungeon over and over again to try your hand at the rare pet! I hope you enjoy!

0.4.35:

July 24 2021

• Misc Changes
  • All the bosses within the Abandoned Windmill have had their health slightly decreased.
  • The "Healing Spring" spell has had its output buffed.
  • Various skeleton spawn points around the Abandoned Windmill dungeon have been reduced.
  • Ribcage trash item now weighs 1 (down from 2).
  • The Skeleton Boss "Lord Noctis" and his minions count towards the Alpha 4 goal of killing skeletons.
• Bug Fixes
  • The Skeleton Boss "Lord Noctis" should now have the proper mechanics working.
  • The "0 Energy Bug" in battle should now be resolved. Further testing is required.
  • Various memory leaks involving battle have been addressed. The memory should climb much slower now after battling.
  • Skill Shrine graphics should no longer glitch out when completing the quests.
  • Damage numbers in battle now appear above the spell animation effects making them much easier to read.
  • Other players will now show their start of casting animation state.
  • Quest objective "Bundled Salt" now properly despawns after you loot it.

Dev Notes:
These changes need to be tested as they may have caused numerous null exceptions. But by playing the game these crashes will be auto-reported and I will be able to resolve them.  We need to test the game heavily this weekend as we have a big PR release happening on Monday bringing new players. Let's put the best game forward, and with your help testing we got this! Thank you!

Patch 0.4.36

July 26 2021

• Mana/energy no longer gets spent when no monster is across from you.
• Fixed the locked door in the dungeon
• You are no longer able to equip abilities to the 3rd action bar slot. This was never intended.
• Skeleton Mages now deal magic damage, so resist works against them.

Patch 0.4.37

August 1 2021

• Tabi the Tabby Pet is now Available
  • Be sure to donate at least $10 this month to get your own orange kitty kat.
• Misc Changes
  • When you send a chat message it no longer plays a sound. Only incoming sounds play.
  • Warning now when you attempt to replace a gem in gear that you will lose the existing gem.
  • Moved monster spawn points around so its a bit easier to navigate the world with careful positioning.
  • Wolves have had their battle sprite updated.
  • The pet drop rate on Lord Noctis has been improved by 200%.
  • Sage: "Word of Fury" now hits 2-3 times at 35% power per hit. (Up from 1-3 times)
• Bug Fixes
  • Memory leak improvements were applied to battle. Please test battle and let me know if the memory leak is better or worse.
  • Honey Tea tooltip and mana restore amount fixed to match.

As a result of the memory leak improvements there may be a few more crashes in the next 24 hours while we collect null exceptions. But this will smooth out by Monday. Please play so we can catch them!

What are you waiting for? Download the game and check out the game's latest Alpha patch now!

You may download the early Alpha access easily through itch.io:

We are really enthusiastic to have you play our game! Being a small indie game
dev company, we depend on your support to keep us going.
Please consider making a small donation to help us fund the continuous
development of Aether Story! It will really help us out.

If you already have Alpha Access, head on over to the Game Downloads page and download the new Launcher Setup Installer!

And don't forget to join us in Discord.gg/phanxgames to share your suggestions, find other players to play with, and hang out.