Sunken City 2.4.5

[Vinz]

Greetings, everyone. It's been 2 years and 2 months since the last time Sunken City received a major update. However it was at the very next day after its release that I started working on version 2.4.5, which is to this day my largest and most ambitious update. Needless to say, the map has received an array of new features, updates and improvements including a complete rework of the shop and overhaul to the kits of all heroes. Below, I will touch upon the most important changes.

For a long time, a major focus in Sunken City has been the customization of your character. In 2.4.5, we've taken that aspect of the map to the next level by significantly expanding all of the systems that allow you, the player, to modify the playstyle of your hero, namely:
• The stats that your have access to in the game.
• The Glyphs.
• The Talents.
• The abilities of each hero, their design, their type and the builds they allow access to.
• The new "Specialization" system.

Let's take a closer look at some of them:

Two new stats have been introduced to Sunken City: Potency and Haste.

Potency: increases any damage you deal by a flat amount equal to the stat value. This is essentially a stat that will mostly help on-damage and summoner builds, but can still function for anyone.
Haste: increases your hero's spellcast frequency by reducing the cooldowns of his abilities. This stat's value basically represents how much more frequently your hero will cast spells.
Other: Additionally, a custom UI has been added which tracks the values for some of the more common custom stats in Sunken City.

Spell Types have been expanded upon in 2.4.5. The 'On-Hit' type has been completely removed, while the old Damaging Type has been split into Magical and Physical. This change mostly affects the itemization and reinforces the theme of certain characters. Additionally a Summoning Type has been added.

This leaves us with the following Types:
• Physical
• Magical
• Healing
• Summoning
• N/A

This allows for a more defined structure of the builds:

CLICK ME

Builds	Description	Best Stats
Magical Spellcaster	Pure spellcasters with theme closest to the 'Mage/Wizard' fantasy that most often deal high amounts of burst damage.	Primary Attribute, Haste, Mastery, Mana
Physical Spellcaster	Pure spellcasters associated with the theme of a brawler or a fighter that deals high damage with abilities where unlike the Magical Spellcaster, there is little to none magic involved.	Attack Damage, Health, Primary Attribute, Haste, Mastery
Battlecaster	A hybrid playstyle which brings together auto-attacks and magical spellcasting.	Attack Speed, Primary Attribute, Mastery, Mana
Crit	Pure auto-attacker who relies on consistent and high damage, dealt mostly with pure attacks and little spellcasting.	Critical Strike, Attack Speed, Attack Damage, Primary Attribute
Summoner	Playstyle that focuses on spawning and empowering minions that do the dirty work for the Hero.	Pet Damage, Potency, Primary Attribute, Mastery
On-damage	Focuses on dealing a multitude of damage instances - every number on the screen has chance to trigger powerful effects or is increased by flat amounts.	Potency, Primary Attribute, Mastery
Support	Enhances the defensive and offensive capabilities of the team.	Primary Attribute, Mastery, Haste, Mana
Tank	High durability and resilience, the Tank also keeps danger away from his allies.	Armor, Spell Damage Reduction, Health, Primary Attribute

2.4.5 will introduce 1 new Glyph per category along with reworks or replacements for existing Glyphs. Here is a preview of these changes:

New Glyphs

	Glyph of Beastfury: Your summons spawn with 25% Critical Strike chance.
	Glyph of Siphoning: Whenever another hero gets healed by a Healing Type effect, you restore health equal to 25% of the healed amount. Overhealing amount is not applied to this effect.
	Glyph of Mindhaste: Increases your Haste by 8% and reduces the cooldowns of all abilities by 0,5 seconds.
	Glyph of Trepidation: Affects enemies in 600 range with Trepidation Aura, which causes them to take 8% more damage from allied units, not including your own units. This effect does not stack.

Reworked / Replacement Glyphs

	Glyph of Affinity: Increases the damage dealt by Magical and Physical Type effects by 18%.
	Glyph of Supremacy: Grants you an additional Talent Slot.
	Glyph of Crippling: Your attacks apply Cripple on the target for 3 seconds, which reduces the damage dealt by attacks by 20% and movement speed by 25%.

Additionally, balance changes have been made to existing Glyphs, which will be detailed in the Changelog after release.

A new feature has been added to the game called "Specializations".

Those of you that have played the game before might be familiar with the 'Mastery' Stat which functioned differently based on the Class you played. In 2.4.5, Mastery now also changes based on your hero's Specialization.

Additionally, Specializations provide a powerful bonus which defines and shapes the build you are going to create throughout the game. This bonus often times represents an ability change in the Hero's kit.

For example, the Shaman now has an ability in his kit which Summons a Fire Elemental. While this unit acts as a meat shield in his Restoration Specialization (Support) and as the core unit of the Elemental Specialization (Summoner), it is out of place in his Enhancement Specialization (Battlecaster = Auto-attacker/Spellcaster hybrid), where the Summon Fire Elemental ability is instead replaced with Elemental Overload which enhances the Shaman's Chain Lightning ability.

In 2.4.5 every single hero has received a new ability, which may or may not alter between specializations. The theme of each hero has been reinforced by the Specializations, the new abilities they have, and their Talents. Speaking of which - 5 new Talents have been added to each hero, with the Talents Menu now being split in 2 pages.

The shop has undergone massive amount of changes in 2.4.5. The items now follow a design philosophy which aims to improve customization and the amount of choices you have available. While previously, players had to essentially look for all of the Crit items to complete their Crit build, for example; in 2.4.5, the items will have more broad usage and will rarely be usable by only 1 build. To paint a better picture, each of the offensive builds in the game will still have access to two items (now called and labeled as 'Relics' in the Shop) which will provide stats and effects which fit just one build, but the rest will be a mix of stats and effects that can fit more than one build and would not be optimal all the time.

Here is also an example of an item as it appears in 2.4.4 and its reworked version for 2.4.5:

(2.4.4) Silver Bow +15 Agility +20 Damage Equip: Grants nearby allies Trueshot Aura which increases ranged attack damage by 15%. Auras with the same name do not Stack. Equip: Increases the damage of auto-attacks by up to 20% based on the distance between your hero and his target.

(2.4.5) Silver Bow +8 All Stats +30% Attack Speed Equip: Shoots a silver arrow every 2 seconds at a random nearby enemy unit that deals 110% of your Attack Damage and is registered as an auto-attack.

As you can see, while the first version is purely a Crit item, the second is an item that can be used by any sort of auto-attacker like Crit, Battlecaster, Auto-attacker Healer / Auto-attacker Tank and possibly other hybrid builds that simply want more attacks.

While the above mentioned changes highlight the most important features and changes, they are far from the only new things in 2.4.5. Several reworked Challenges, tons of new droppable items, new custom UI for several ingame systems, improvements to several puzzles, changes to enemies and improvements to Heroic Mode, new Backpack abilities, Quality of Life improvements, Balance changes to all Heroes, bugfixes and a lot more is also included in this huge endavour which has taken 2 years of my life to complete.

I want to give my special thanks to the following people, who have helped me immensely, and without whom this version wouldn't be what it is:
• First and foremost - my friend and buddy in designing this map @Vunjo. He has played a fundamental part in many design choices that I've taken not only in this update but also throughout the years.
• @Bribe who was always there to help me integrate his incredible Damage Engine into this map. Many and incredibly important features simply wouldn't have been possible without his genious work.
• @PROXY who has created several models specifically for this map from scratch along with a bunch of small (but important) edits and fixes.
• All the Testers from my Discord Server, who dedicated countless hours into playing the map and have reported a ton of bugs and gave me great suggestions along the way.

See you in Sunken City!

- Spasmaster

 

[SpasMaster]

Huge shoutout to @Mythic who created the art for the headers and separators for this announcement!

Full changelog can be found on the map page.
Enjoy!

 

[Planetary]

That's looks like a lot of newly expended effort on top of a high-effort map; I commend you. I like the tight fitment of the custom UI elements (party frame is crisp).

 

[SpasMaster]

A complete UI overhaul is on the list for future updates.

 

[Chaosy]

Worthy hosted project, and top tier presentation as always.

 

[A]mun]

Your work ethic is to be admired!

 

[Wos]

So glad to see another version of this map being released. This map has became a classic me for me and some friends. Thanks Spas, and everyone that contributes.

 

[Astrella]

Is the map open-source? Cause I'd definitely be interested in a look at it. Alternatively, if you're interested in sharing, I'd love to know how you did the UI for the stats system.

 

[GodofCinder]

Yay

 

[Kam]

There's an incredible depth of quality content here!