For Release Candidate 0.1.38

Hello fellow Necromantics. As we look closer at our Romance update, we find items that can improve and make gameplay more enjoyable. Listening to our audience, as well as our developers, we’ve got a few updates for today's patch!

• Updates on the dialogue system to make it easier to navigate
  
• Combat companion UI updates and improvements
  
• We had some reports on some game freezes, and have addressed them
  
• Addressing the challenge of finding gifts and the amount of gifts
  
• Updates on your combat companion behaviour
  
• Some unlock bugs on new characters in the courtyard have been fixes
  
• Many more behind the scenes updates as well

Keep those comments and suggestions coming as we work on making Necromantic necro-awesome!

Please fill out the Player Survey if you have a spare moment.[forms.gle]

For Release Candidate 0.1.36
As we launched the first version of our romance update, we knew there were some Quality of Life, as well as more necessary User Interface elements we wanted to include or tweak. Now that the romance feature is in your hands, our first quick update is listed below. Also we’ll be constantly on the lookout for suggestions, and would love to learn more about how you play your characters in conjunction with your combat companions.

After you’ve leveled up your relationship with a character in Valorborn successfully, you unlock them as a combat ally. You’ll now notice a new icon appearing in the bottom left corner of the screen when in battle! This icon shows the character who’s about to arrive, and their heart color indicates the relationship level you’ve reached with them. You can see more details when you talk to them in the Courtyard when you're not dealing with the undead.

The combat companion icon will show your unlocked combat ally, as well as a meter that gradually fills. When the meter is full, your ally will appear in a flash of light and will fight by your side. Note: Your combat companion will only be there for a short time, but will be back soon to help out in your assignments. When you have more than one friend unlocked, they will take turns coming to your aid. The more companions you unlock, and the deeper the relationship with each one, the more improved chance of appearing and being your combat helper. So pay attention to those relationship meters back at the courtyard!

We think that the combat companions will add an extra dimension to your exploration of the lands about Valorborn, as well as inject some energy, and survivability through the perilous night assignments. Let us know what you think, and as always, we welcome your much valued suggestions to Necromantic!

Please fill out the Player Survey if you have a spare moment.[forms.gle]

Greetings to all you Necromantics. We applaud your patience for all those who’ve been with us since our Early Access launch, and of course welcome to all our new Necromantics! Blinkmoon Games is extremely grateful to our supporters and celebrate our first major update since late May! Many of our fans (as well as ourselves of course!) have been wanting to venture more into the romance side of Necromantic. We’ve been keen to open up our world, characters and lore to our audience, and this major update gives us an excellent opportunity to do so! At its heart ❤️ (see what I did there), Necromantic is an action first game, so any game mechanic will naturally lean heavily into that, and the romance elements are no exception. This is our first implementation of the feature, and we strive to react and adjust it depending upon your feedback, and our team's capabilities.

• The new romance feature, see the section below to learn more about how it works.
  
• Note: For those who haven’t seen it yet, there is a new Yearbook with a bit of Necromantic lore and character art
  
• Updated help screen
  
• New diamond player indicator for conversations
  
• Lightning Damage has been increased
  
• Siren’s wail radius and Damage per second increased
  
• Minor text updates
  
• Notification popups for potions, health, and other buffs in game
  
• In game Gift crate indicator
  
• Many bug fixes ‘under the hood’ for stability

In the Romance Feature update, we covered what the feature is all about. To refresh on the romance loop:

1. Find Gift Crates when in combat and collect the gifts contained within
   
2. Give gifts to viable NPCs in the courtyard
   
3. Fill a relationship meter between the character you are using and that NPC
   
4. Fill the meter to marked thresholds to unlock an improved relationship with the NPC
   
   • Their dialogue towards your character improves
     
   • That NPC will come to that character’s aid in combat!
5. Continue giving gifts to fill the relationship meter to the next threshold, and the NPC becomes more powerful when they appear.

Thank you very much for the ongoing support and continued feedback. Please keep it coming via Steam and Discord. We look forward to tuning and tweaking your experience at Valorborn, and wish you every success in keeping the ever growing hordes at bay.

Please fill out the Player Survey if you have a spare moment.[forms.gle]

Hello fellow Necromantics! We are hard at work on our next major feature - Romance - and it's coming out very soon. So soon in fact, that the first iteration of the Romance feature will be in the game by the end of June.

Romance is a combination of narrative character development, item collection and turn in, and combat boosts in Single Player gameplay. If you like to get to know the characters and their backstories, this is the beginning of that. If you want more power when you’re in a fight, this helps there too.

Through our new Romance feature, you can interact with the main cast of characters of Valorborn via a dialogue system. Here you will learn about various students, how they feel about you (as the character talking to them), and opinions of other characters from their perspective. The sharp eyed player will also take note of empty meter under your portrait.

Now, when you're in combat, you’ll discover a new object... a crate. When you break a crate open, collectible items spill out of it.

Those collectibles are gifts that can be given to particular students back in Valorborn’s courtyard. Give a character a gift they appreciate, and the relationship meter associated with their portrait will start to fill. Keep it up, and the romance meter will fill to the point where a threshold is passed, and you’ll notice that how they speak to you changes. While some may mature into full blown romance, others may be more on the platonic end of friendship.

When you cross a certain relationship threshold with a character, they will also appear in combat to join you for a short time, bringing with them their primary weapons and possibly abilities too. Keep improving that relationship, and they will stay for longer when they appear, and be progressively more powerful with each upgrade. As with students in real life, some enjoy your company, while others... let's just say may take more work to get acquainted with. All of this is for the new student to discover and find their place at Valorborn.

Keep in mind, this is the first edition of this feature, and there’s lots more we want to do with it, but we feel it’s important to get it in front of our players. We hope you enjoy the beginning of our newest feature!

From all of the Necromantic devs, we hope you like the first intro to this new long asked for feature, and hope you continue to enjoy your time playing Necromantic!

Please fill out the Player Survey if you have a spare moment.[forms.gle]

For Release Candidate 0.1.29

Greetings fellow Necromantics! As we settle into development and support of our title, we’re starting to get into a new rhythm of content, updates, or fixes. We’re always gathering feedback and looking for things to improve on your gameplay sessions, and are always appreciative of your comments. Here are a few items we’ve worked on for this next update.

• For those new (or even those who are not so new to Necromantic) we’ve assembled some handy dandy help screens to aid in navigation of our universe. Feedback for more items in a help screen, would be appreciated as well, so keep those suggestions coming. For further help, please take a look (and participate) in our Discord and Steam Discussions, as our community are always actively helping each other out. True Necromantics indeed!
  
• You’ll see a new Yearbook at the entrance to the Courtyard, which has some new art for the characters that live and conduct studies at Valorborn.
  
• We’ve heard your feedback, and have changed up the ‘No cheese assignment’ which has been swapped out for something much more clear and attainable.

The hardworking developers at Blinkmoon, are always grateful for your continued support, and will take all feedback into consideration as we offer new patches, and content updates. 'Keep on slayin’!

Please fill out the Player Survey if you have a spare moment.[forms.gle]

For Release Candidate 0.1.24

Hello Necromantics! We’re still hard at work on some nice quality of life improvements, and a smattering of fixes to make your stay at Valorborn more comfortable. The devs are all busy with programming, arting, designing updates and addressing anything that looks like a 6 legged creature, so thank you for staying with us! Here are some updates to the latest Necromantic build!

• Forage Redesigned - Increased Pickup Range in exchange for attack speed
  
• Perception has been rebalanced
  
• Fire Shard spread increased to help with crowd control
  
• Lighting update and fixes, particularly in the courtyard area

Keep those comments coming in the Steam Discussion and Discord fellow Necromantics! We do go through them and address them where we can. Stay tuned in the next few weeks for an update as well! Wink wink.

Please fill out the Player Survey if you have a spare moment.[forms.gle]

Greetings fellow Necromantics! Last week we were busy with some much needed patches to ensure everyone is enjoying their full experience. This week we’ve been hard at work on the anticipated romance features. We can’t say much about it right now, but we’re pretty excited to show everyone more from the Necromantic universe, so stay tuned.

There have been a few assignment issues, and core gameplay tuning that the design department has been investigating, so we’ll have a patch(es) out as soon as possible.

One of the discussions on steam brought up a question about playing Necromantic without internet. If you are on Steam Offline mode, or have no internet connection, you can still take Necromantic to work on some assignments offline! This is particularly great if you have a laptop, a Steam Deck, or handheld when you are traveling. Note, that if you’re in airplane mode, this typically cuts out Bluetooth, so you’ll either have to manually toggle that, or be without your wireless controller or mouse. Because you are offline, you will not be able to play Co-op mode for obvious reasons.

We polled out dev team for gameplay tips, and here are a couple of gems that may help you navigate the Valorborn Academy assignments.

• When fending off the hordes, minimal movement often helps. When rapidly moving around I sometimes tend to ‘freak out’ and make mistakes when trying to avoid an enemy, but instead end up smacking into it’s dangerous neighbour accidently. Usually I keep still, aim (if using targetted fire) and always look for an exit lane, or an area where the hordes are less thick, and cut a path in that direction.
  
• Elite enemies can drop pieces of cheese, as well as higher tier XP gems

From the Necromantic devs, we wish you a great week, and an even better time playing Necromantic!

Please fill out the Player Survey if you have a spare moment.[forms.gle]

For Release Candidate 0.1.21

Today’s patch has some quick updates and fixes, as well as a bit of play balancing. Keep those comments and discussions popping, as we’re fixing as fast as we can.

• Some updates to animations as they may be some visual artifacts on some creatures
  
• Mini Boss / Elite Health tuning
  
• Some visual effects had been behaving badly, so we’ve sent them to detention to curb that behaviour.
  
• Pause menu updates

On behalf of all the devs, we hope you’ve been enjoying your Necro-sperience so far! Here’s to many more QoL and updates to make your gameplay sessions all that much better. Thank you!

Please fill out the Player Survey if you have a spare moment.[forms.gle]

For Release Candidate 0.1.20

Hello fellow Necromantics! We’re now a week past Early Access launch, and as you can tell, we’ve been busy. We’re constantly combing the Steam discussions, discord and Facebook to see how we can make your lives as Valorborn survivors easier and more engaging. We’ve got some great Quality of Life improvements here for you, so without further ado, here’s the latest changes.

• Updates to fix holes and exploitable walls in Brookhaven, Squalor Creek and other troublesome areas
  
• Fallen Warrior plumes have been updated, as they sometimes would exhibit some funky behaviour
  
• Free play after completing chapter has been addressed now
  
• Added Vsync to settings, as many have requested this
  
• Spectator mode added to Multiplayer Co-op. So you no longer have to look at your tombstone as you wait anxiously for your classmate to save you

As always, we’re listening, and please keep those comments coming our way, so we can improve Necromantic. A heartfelt thanks from the dev team!

Please fill out the Player Survey if you have a spare moment.[forms.gle]