65 replies to this topic

[Russ]

It's that time of year again. Introducing Yuurand: Paths of Grief, the 5.0 update to Yuurand. Rather than post a bunch of screenshots this time around, I'm gonna just link to the trailer we threw together



So let's briefly go over the new features this update adds.

Reikon Labyrinth
This is the big one, obviously. The labyrinth from Reikon has been adapted to Yuurand and is selectable from the main menu. If you've played Reikon, you're probably aware that a 1:1 port of the map doesn't exactly work, so we've taken a few liberties redesigning some area to better fit Yuurand. Reikon areas can also appear in Fragmented runs as well.

Achievements
The game will now keep track of progress towards 56 achievements. Unlocking achievements will net you new characters and costumes. Of the 56, 2 simply have bragging rights, and 5 have rewards that will unlock in a future update (we apologize for not stuffing yet more content into this update).

Carryover saves and passwords
Related to the above, runs can now be reset by selecting "Abort run" from the warp point menu. The game will save and return you to the file select screen. Reopening the file will put you back on the main menu, preserving all achievements and unlocks. If a future update breaks save files, selecting Password->Display password from the main menu will give you a 32 digit password which, when entered on a new save file via Password->Input password, will unlock all characters, costumes, and achievements from the old save file.

Additionally, some passwords will have unique effects. The six characters previously given out as special names for completing challenges can be unlocked by entering their names as passwords so that you don't have to earn them a second time. Entering a VM boss's name will guarantee they will appear as the boss of your next run, making it easier to unlock achievements involving beating them. Finally, as hinted at in the trailer, the Spectral Mother can be unlocked by acquiring a special password from Reikon. To obtain this password,

Spoiler

beat the mean game, clear floor 30 of the Dream Zone, go the central island of Lac D'Amour and push the statue onto the center of the web, and return to City of Grief to defeat the superboss variant of the final battle, Tyrant Vanice.

This is easier said than done, we assure you.

Partners
Partners can be used in certain conditions now. To enable them, go to the warp point menu, tab to the partners tab, and set "Enable partners" to on. You can have up to three characters (not counting your current player character) in your party at once. The first one in the list will follow you around in the labyrinth and convey a passive bonus to you (for instance, Flect will cause your primaries to poison enemies, while Rhone will shield you from suffering knockback from enemies). You can also switch characters to anyone in your party. Partner characters are enabled during story modes and in Roguelike mode. Which leads into...

Roguelike Mode
Roguelike mode can be selected from the main menu. In this mode, death is permanent. Dying or F6ing will kill the current character. If you have another character in your party, you will switch to playing as them. If there are no other characters, the run will abort and eject you to the main menu. Additionally, if you take too long to begin killing bosses, a warning message will appear. Delay any further any a curse will be cast on you, further increasing the difficulty by means such as reducing your offense or causing some harder enemies to spawn. The length of the timer can be set at the start of a run (it can also be disabled if you abhor time pressure). To compensate for the difficulty of this mode, all characters have double defense. Additionally, partner characters can be found hidden throughout the labyrinth to serve as extra lives and to convey partner benefits.

Custom Seeds
A new custom seed, "What's The Time?" by Orithan, is now included. This seed gives you Halt and several MP upgrades early while witholding HP and other powerful spells, encouraging clever use of halt to survive.

Want to make a custom seed yourself? The custom seed template has been updated to include a Reikon seed template and to add the new areas and bosses. Grab it here.

Other new stuff
- Unlockable characters now show up as silhouettes on the character select screen, becoming selectable once they are unlocked
- SEVERAL new unlockable characters added
- SEVERAL new outfits added
- Bosses may randomly wear different outfits
- Seven new T1 bosses added (six of these premiered in Reikon)
- Two new roaming bosses added
- The warp point menu has been redesigned with multiple tabs to accommodate more elements

Character changes
- Nerfed the Low% reward character: His aggression damage now caps at 2x and bottoms out at 0.5x. Added unique shadow magnet behaviour to prevent abuse
- Tweaked total eclipse reward character's emptiness, buffing him early game but nerfing him later game
- Buffed Dracus, removing his weapon damage penalty and MP cost for his primaries
- Tweaked Victor: He can now dash while slashing. No longer regains MP on a miss. Defense is a flat -25%. Thunder behaviour changed.
- Modified Miles: His old passive (attack up, defense down) is replaced by a dynamic attack boost that increases as he takes damage and decreases over time. Bleeding visual effect included!
- Buffed Jandra: Rose Ultima now costs significantly less MP. When Rose Ultima is on cooldown, attack is increased by 25% but defense is decreased by 25%.
- Hito's flame form is slightly cheaper
- Rhone's defense has been buffed
- Holm's previous upgrades (strong wind, petal absorb+, and half mp petal shield) have been replaced with strong shields, 3/4 MP magic stream, and reduced MP shields
- The strength of reflected projectiles for Holm and Quinn has been buffed to 1.25x. Additionally, the damage cap on reflected projectiles has increased from 600 to 1000.
- Flect's primaries deal more damage
- Mirr's Wink no longer costs MP
- Speedrun reward character's sound wave mechanics have been altered. The initial hit does full damage, upgraded with strong thunder, while concurrently splash damage equal to half the main shot's damage surrounds it. This stops reliance on multihits with a knockback system that is temperamental at times.
- Horizon is now immune to strong sunlight
- Naiya no longer floods the Yuurei and Yuurand labyrinths. We apologize for removing this feature, but it was simply causing too many bugs and couldn't be integrated into the character switching without some saving and quitting jank
- In return, Naiya's signature is now half the mp cost and can be used offensively
- One particular secret character has been greatly buffed, but will no longer unlock with her name. You'll need to find her unlock password in Reikon

Spell changes
- Nerfed flake shield; it now does slightly less damage and creates 5 orbiters, rather than 6, when enhanced (this change brings it into line with Reikon)
- Nerfed longer buffs
- Reduced power boost's duration
- Slightly reduced speed boost's duration, allowing it to be cast a second time without recasting enhance
- Quake no longer deals knockback, and instead deals damage over time, ignoring enemy iframes
- Sword weapons (e.g. Gale's, Lucas's, and Xaya's signatures) can now properly be turned mid-stab/slash, as with the default ZC sword.

Other noteworthy changes
- Shy eyes nerfed on easy
- Water elemental damage nerfed on difficult/sadistic
- Sync bosses now pause for 90 extra frames (1.5 seconds) following their teleport attacks
- Xaya nerfed to bring her in line with other roaming bosses and prevent her from blendering you in small rooms
- Obtaining a high enough speed will now leave behind an afterimage effect.


Lastly, two big announcements
First, we wanna plug our Discord sevrer for Yuurand and Yuurei series content in general, The Labyrinth. In addition to discussion of Yuurand, we also post previews of new updates, host races, and just generally talk about stuff.

Second, we wanna announce a challenge here. Like with the First Official Yuurace, the reward is your original character being added to the next Yuurand update. How do you win? Be the first to unlock all achievements. Send us a screenshot of the completed achievements board once you're done. We'll announce the winner here and in the discord server.


The quest file can be downloaded from the main database page here. All the new music required for this update comes from Reikon, so if you have Reikon's music downloaded, you're all set. If not, you can grab it here. If you don't have all the music from the last Yuurand update, you can download the master music folder, which contains the music for all four games in the series, here.

As always, while we strive to deliver a bug-free experience, some bugs will inevitably occur due to the sheer scope of the quest. If you run into any, please post them here, mention them in the server, or PM us either on the forums or on Discord.

[Lordkronos]

Cool Trailer

[Orithan]

If anyone is struggling to navigate in my custom seed, I have a visual guide for it up and running:

Obvious spoilers. This visual guide has every boss location as well as the locations for every spell and the requirements to travel between each area.

Spoiler

[Russ]

Sorry for the quick update, but I caught a cutscene bug that, if I'm reading right, has actually existed in the game for a long time. If you're planning on playing story modes, I'd suggest you redownload. Sorry for the inconvenience.

[DarkFlameSheep]

I glad to hear we can use The Spectral Mother as a playable character. We will see the glory of her!

Edited by DarkFlame Sheep, 13 July 2020 - 08:04 AM.

[Lordkronos]

Seems Like an Nice Update but I Realy Hope that The Lost Character are Easyer to Unlock then the Previous Ones i Always Have Trouble to Figure out what Total Eclypse is and How i can Become That well Yeah but I Will Defenitely Try it Nice Suprise That now Characters are Added from Deeps of Malice

[Lordkronos]

I glad to hear we can use The Spectral Mother as a playable character. We will see the glory of her!

Ha ha Nice Signature What would Hard say about it

 

 

[Mani Kanina]

Second, we wanna announce a challenge here. Like with the First Official Yuurace, the reward is your original character being added to the next Yuurand update. How do you win? Be the first to unlock all achievements. Send us a screenshot of the completed achievements board once you're done. We'll announce the winner here and in the discord server.

I mean, you could just have said "Oh, btw, we'll let Dimi add another character at a later date." and it would have been essentially the same.
I don't seen anyone else winning this outside of someone cracking the password structure to unlock them that way. Especially considering you included some bragging rights ones, which makes me think they are silly hard.

Anyway, as for the update, it seems nice! More content to randomize into is generally what makes randomizers interesting. I might take the quest for another spin, there is a lot to like here, I just wish I meshed better with the gameplay/level design that you two usually produce, same for the aesthetics too, really. Cause there is just a crap ton of content here if you're in for it.
 

I'm a bit more skeptical of the new roguelite mode, the added flat extra defence is good, but I'm not sure if the measures in place are enough? This quest is rather long, I realize you can speedrun it but that's kinda besides the point a bit. There is such a bulk of content in the game that unless you have played it quite many times already then you're likely to run into new boss after new boss that you only get one (or two?) shots at, and if you die that can be quite a few hours lost to that run. I guess the best way to put it is that it feels like an afterthought, which I guess it was?

Edited by Mani Kanina, 13 July 2020 - 05:50 PM.

[Deedee]

I mean, that assumes a lack of faith of the challenges being fair. You're almost certain to crack open at least a few achievements per run due to how widely varied they are, especially if you're already someone who plays fragmented frequently.

[Mani Kanina]

Dimi: Not sure what you mean, I mean, I'm sure most if not all achivements are reasonable..., it's just that I think few people will get them all?

 

Also, I'm told this is special:

wooo, first achive-o :toot:

[Russ]

I kinda touched on it in the server, but I'm not gonna lose sleep if people don't get every achievement. I'd like to see people go for it, and I think it's a fun challenge and all the achievements should be doable, but it's hardly gonna be the last chance to get an original character added. With any luck, Aevin and I will be doing other events like last year's race again at some point.

 

Anyways, Hero of Fire and Lord Kronos helped me catch some bugs. A few of which are pretty not great and could lock you out of bosses or areas on certain runs. I'd highly advise grabbing the newest update I just uploaded. Sorry for the inconvenience.

[Avaro]

I'm speechless. o_o Great changes and additions. Persistent savegames and the achievement board is the best addition.

[Russ]

Another day, another bugfix update. This fixes mostly minor things, but a few major ones, so please redownloaded. It also adds a new custom seed: Hitodama Classic. This seed replicates Hitodama's item placements as well as can be managed with Yuurand, though obviously the new items and bosses through an interesting wrench in things.

[Mani Kanina]

It's kinda hard to review Yuurand in full at this point simply due to have large the quest is, it's five whole labyrinths in there now and plenty of game changing characters to play as. I don't subscribe to the idea that reviewer need to have done absolutely everything or even close to that in order to be able to review a game, that being said, in order to accurately talk about your experience while also being honest, you're gonna have to be specific here.

So, here we go, consider this a review for the general state of Yuurand currently as well as the Living Labyrinth: (plenty of spoilers ahead if you haven't played Yuurand! you have been warned)

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The living labyrinth is the best execution of the ideas presented in this quest that I have played, and for some added context to that, I have in much earlier versions of the quest done the Yuurei and Yuurand maps. The living one is for the most part better structured than either of the other ones I have played, it lacks a bit in connectivity in some parts, plenty of areas are dead ends with one entrance as far as I found, but that's it's biggest weakness. Things that are seemingly lacking in the other maps I have played are present here: actual puzzle motifs (that are indeed introduced early on and later expanded upon), a cohesion of themes that see a nice variety in areas and themes, but they still blend together to a whole that makes sense. That last point is also further enhanced by screens that help branch one area into the other, as well as other screens that also acknowledges the surrounding areas, the castle having outdoor areas that features the theme of the area next to it, etc.

Screen design and area flow are also much better and clearer than some of the ones in the other maps, I guess it makes sense since I assume the authors have just gotten better at making this sort of thing after having done a few.
It was simply more enjoyable to do the core gameplay loop this time around then it has been before, and there were much fewer instances where the game threw weird curve balls as to what to do in the core progression to the end. And I think this absolutely affected my enjoyment of playing through this quest a third/fourth time for the better. While there are things that I think could maybe be improved upon, I have nothing but praise for this new map. It is of note that while the living map is more streamlined than previous ones, it is the harder one in combat encounters in a few regards. It will throw harder enemies and formations at you much much earlier, and while the end-game didn't seem that much more different, I do think that's slightly harder too. This sadly makes it more of a map for veterans, when for almost everything else I'd recommend this map as the introductory to the game.

Anyway, map was good, more like this if you make more! :Y

As for other thoughts on the quest, I think most of my complaints comes down to factors that I feel like are simply a lack of polish. Conceptually this is weird because the quest has existed for so long and gotten so many updates, but most of my stray complaints do feel like things that would be mostly easy to address. But I suppose it might just be that no one have considered them a problem previously because they are used to them, so, here they are in random order:

 

Teleports map colour coding:

The teleporter tile on the map is yellow, the selector for the one you currently have selected when deciding to warp is a flashing white. This is harder to see then it should be, the quick fix would be to make the blinking marker have black outlining to better highlight where it is.

 

Teleporter's special warps colour coding:
I wasn't sure of if the main maze boss was considered the final boss or if you needed to beat tartarus(?) for that. This uncertainty I had before also reflected how I viewed this issue, but the latest version of the quest makes it quite clear: You don't complete the achievements for doing a story campaign till you beat them, ergo, it's the final boss, ergo, the bonus mini dungeons to unlock access to them is required. When this quest first came out I felt like it was meant to be a somewhat unclear meta puzzle in order to fight a secret bonus boss, because it's conceptionally constructed like one. The mechanics to get to those hidden mini areas is not opaque in the slightest, there is very little hints in-game as to what you're required to do in order to proceed. I believe in my first playthrough I straight up had to be told what the meaning to the one hint provided actually was, because it's not intuitive. You have to put it in the perspective of a person who don't know the solution in order to accurately look at if it's a good idea. Because they will have to wildly guess at as to what the solution might be in order to proceed.

That's bad on it's own, but even if you know what the gimmick is to the puzzle there are still annoyances in that you're expected to remember the elemental affinity of each party in quite many (6) sets. This is my third run and I still had to resort to trying all my elemental spells until I found the right ones. If you have it memorize and know what to do? Fair. But I don't think this is engaging to push all players through. I don't know how to solve the first problem of a player not knowing what the crap to do while also retaining the "mystery" of it all. But I think the solution to the latter problem is this: An option before you start the game that replaces the coloured dots with an icon that shows what element you're meant to use. Is that boring? Maybe, but this is a game meant to played more than once, and I'd rather if this was streamlined.

The difficulty settings and what they do is a bit off:
I want to start this by saying that I don't at all know what the difficulty settings do under the hood, they seem to be number tweaks but also more things. Because of this I won't suggest any specific changes, cool? cool.
Anyway, I think the difficulty options need some tweaks, and I will walk you through how I came to that conclusion. The previous two times I played this quest I believe I played on normal, which at the time I think was a good pick for me and my tastes. Now, in this fourth playthrough (I started a third one at some point but I don't think I finished that one...) I decided that I'd rather just breeze through the combat a bit so I can just experience the new stuff, so I picked relaxed. So I started the game and it was still quite darn hard, not excessively so, but a fair bit. Part of that is just the enemy set in the Living map, but even outside of that it seemed not really that different from normal. So I just assumed that it was a minor downgrade in difficulty from normal and that it was mostly the same, which, you know, fair enough. Five hours later I killed tartarus by just spamming shadow magnet essentially and practically tanking every single hit. What?!

And it's not just that, most of the areas later in the game required me to care a whole lot less about what was going on than earlier parts of the game, despite there being harder enemies and gimmicks spicing things up. Which in turn suggests, at least based on my experience, that relaxed mode has a reversed difficulty curve. That is to say, it is the hardest it will ever be at the start of the game, and then gets easier as it goes along. The further you go, the more tools you have to counter various scenarios, the more health you have to tank hits, the more magic you have to spam your strongest crap. There clearly is room here to improve matters.

Like I said, I'm not gonna suggest specific changes, but general tweaks for relaxing difficulty should be: Making combat encounters easier at the start, tweak combat encounters later in the game to be a tiny bit harder, no changes to the bosses, they seem fine the way they are for this difficulty level. (I mean, the bosses were piss easy for me, but the point of this mode is to appeal to players less skilled than me or those who want to breeze through the combat). I have not played this quest enough to say that these are fundamental problems that affect all difficulty modes, but that should also be considered before doing any difficulty tweaks. (I do seem to remember the difficulty curve of combat outside of bosses feeling a bit flat in my old runs, but that was years ago, so).

Roguelite/Roguelike mode needs more tweaks:
It should goes without saying that the previous issue I brought up negatively affects a mode with perma death, but I'm not going to go into that here.
I tried a little bit of roguelite before I settle into my regular run, but I haven't actually done a complete run, so take this with some grains of salt, what-have-you. I did however keep it in mind as I played through my regular run though, and..., I kind of feel the quest was not designed around this at all? I know it was retroactively put into the quest, of course, but I don't think enough went into making it work. I don't mean that on a technical level, of course, but on a design level. The quest has a lot of dead ends as well as other scenarios where the average player used to ZC would F6 in order to go back to the start of the area, and not just for trivial things either.

Here are four spots on the Living map where I think most people would pretty reasonably F6 (I'm sure you can think of more):

It's more than just specific spots though, it's to cut back on tedious backtracking, which the game does have a fair bit of. I feel like for the introduction of a roguelite mode to work in this game you absolutely need to introduce a way to either warp back to the start of the area you are in, or to a warp point you have already been to. Obviously to avoid people just using it to cheese death, have it take a few seconds to cast or something. TBH, it might be a good inclusion in the game outside of roguelite mode too in order to have an in-game solution, the F6 menu have always felt like a crutch to rely upon. And of note: This has to be something that you start with, not a randomly placed upgrade you find. (Because if it's randomly placed, you could end up getting it long after it's useful, and it's useful very early on as you run into locked gates requiring spells you don't have).

 

Timed challenge:
There are various timed challenges in the game, I don't really have any problem with them as challenges, but they could use with more clarity to help players more accurately identify them. There are multiple problems, but they are all related to clarity, so I'll suggest a few tweaks:

1. The time challenge related blocks that go up and down should have their own visual graphics to indicate what they are. A clock icon on them would be specific, but really, anything that makes them stand out better than just "doors but different colour than the area's other doors".
2. A better sound effect for the ticking clock when on the challenge, the current one sounds close (if it's not identical) to the one wall bouncers use when bouncing on walls, and just in general it does not sound like a clock ticking.
3. Maybe a visual indicator on the screen of how much time is left, this would have the added effect of increased accessibility for those with limited hearing or no hearing.

 

Overhangs for items:
So, most items are either out in the open or are shown when blasting away the block above them, but there are a fair few items that are placed under overhangs so you don't see what they are when you pick them up. This is usually not a problem in a regular run because there is a pop-up that tells you what you just picked up. But there are a few achievements that want you to be conservative with what you pick up, and specifically for players wanting to do those achievements these are really bad. Because you still need/desire to pick up all spells, even if you can only nab 9 coins, so having to pick up an item to find out what it is? That's really disruptive to the experience of those runs.
 

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Anyway, those are my thoughts after having played through the quest again. I'd like to re-iterate that I mostly had an enjoyable time. I still think the quest relies a bit too much on requiring you to walk against and shoot every wall to find items/paths, but at least for the Living map most of that is for item locations, not the critical path (unless you get unlucky in spell placements). But hey, that's just me.
 

[Russ]

As I mentioned in Discord, thank you for the feedback Mani!

 

Partially in response to the above, and partially in response to feedback from others, I've added a few new features to Yuurand. These include the following:

- You can access a training dummy from the warp point menu, allowing you to view your damage output.

- You can view the achievement board from the warp point menu.

- Timed switches have a visual indicator on the passive subscreen.

 

I've also fixed quite a few bugs. Aevin and I are planning on adding a few more quality of life features in the coming days as we gather feedback on what people want to see, so if there's a feature you'd like added, speak up!