Patreon Weekly #40 - Mar 9th, 2020 (Patreon)

Hey Patrons!

Since last week I’ve been making improvements to Yog-Dzewa in prep for hopefully releasing beta-5.0 during this week. I'm currently playtesting implementations for the new fists while finalizing the design for Yog itself.

I’m also still working on that Patreon refresh I mentioned but have opted to take a bit more time to ensure things are designed well. I’ll likely end up rolling out improvements incrementally, rather than all at once. The discord server will be the first improvement though and will come soon!

Lastly, you may have noticed that I’ve been tweaking the format for weeklies a bit over the last while to try and make them more focused and entertaining. If you like or dislike any of these adjustments, please let me know!

Read on if you'd like more details... 

Format for Weeklies

Here are the major adjustments to weeklies that I’ve made recently:

Firstly, I’ve split weeklies into a summary of the week followed by one or two detailed sections. This helps people see what a weekly is about at a glance, keeps a consistent structure that’s easier for me to fill in, and means people can easily skip sections they aren’t interested in.

I’m also now trying to limit weeklies to ~500 words total. Limiting their size helps me to write them quickly, helps readers not get fatigued from reading them every week, and means I have to prioritize interesting text instead of just rambling.

Lastly, moving forward I’m going to use Patreon’s timed publishing feature to release weeklies more consistently. The current plan is 11am eastern time every Monday. A consistent schedule means people won't be guessing when the next weekly comes out.

Weeklies are the backbone of the content I’m offering on Patreon, and I suspect they will stay that way for the foreseeable future, so it’s really important to me that they’re interesting to you guys. Please let me know how you feel about these format changes, or weeklies in general!

Yog’s Fists

As mentioned last weekly I’m expanding the Yog fight to feature three pairs of two fists, and during a given Yog fight one fist from each pair will be encountered. The fists in each pair have a different twist on the same core theme:

The Burning and Soiled Fists focus on manipulating the environment to their advantage. Aside from the name change from earthen fist to soiled fist, these are the same as in last weekly.

The Rotting and Rusted Fists focus on powerful melee attacks and tankiness. Both fists take damage in a deferred manner, which means bursting them down isn’t possible. The rotting fist can ooze the player and heals itself over water, whereas the rusted fist can cripple but is too large to fit into smaller corridors. I want both of these fists to encourage a slower fight where the player has to mix attacking them with smart positioning while waiting for damage to tick down.

The Bright and Dark Fists focus on powerful ranged attacks and longer lasting debuffs that affect your vision. Both are the only fists to be able to use ranged attacks without a cooldown, so taking cover will be necessary! The bright fist can blind the player for extended periods, while the dark fist can snuff out the player’s light source. Both of these debuffs can persist after the fist dies, though of course there are ways to play around them.