Rogue Legacy 2 - Patch v0.6.0 - The Dragon's Vow Update

The fourth major content update for Rogue Legacy 2 has landed with the Dragon’s Vow. Our original plan was to release a smaller, earlier patch following the Pizza Mundi, but seeing as this will be one of our last updates before v1.0, we decided to take our time and go all-out. We’ve made combat more engaging with Skill Crits, improved accessibility with House Rules, and just all-around balanced the game to make it the best version of RL2 yet. The Dragon’s Vow also lands with a new biome, new classes, and a slew of new traits, relics, and more.

****SPECIAL THANKS ** ** We want to give a special shout-out to the dedicated and always incredible members of our Discord that tested this patch in advance to provide feedback and ensure a smooth experience for everyone before it launched. This is a huge update and with it came a hoard of bugs, so the reports provided were absolutely invaluable. A few may have slipped through the cracks, but the worst offenders have been squashed and we will continue to push out patches to address any others that come up. Thanks so much to our Discord members for going above and beyond in helping us make this patch possible.

**IMPORTANT ** For what we are hoping is the very last time, when loading a pre-played file all skills in the Skill Tree will be reset and the money spent there will be refunded. To help get things back to normal more quickly we’ve added a button that allows players to instantly purchase a skill five times. All equipment and runes have also been unequipped (due to changes in gear weight) and the Soul Shop has been reset. All Souls have been refunded and Mastery XP has been retained. No progress in the game has been lost.

We’ve also greatly improved input remapping support for different gamepads, but as a consequence had to reset all input bindings. Players will have to remap their gamepad controls when launching the Dragon’s Vow.

PATCH HIGHLIGHTS

The Final Biome – Players can finally explore the subterranean depths of the Pishon Dry Lake, the final biome in Rogue Legacy 2. Fight off the encroaching darkness and traverse one of the largest areas to date. Meet new people, make deals, and do anything to survive. This region is not for the weak of heart, so players must steel their resolve and search through every inch of these cavernous walls to unveil the secrets behind a tragic betrayal.

Pinky and the Brain – Much like the Lancer and the Boxer prior, the Dragon’s Vow is introducing two new heroes that are polar opposites of one another. The Ronin is a disciplined warrior that can turn any opponent into sushi in the blink of an eye. The class boasts incredible range and lightning quick attacks, along with a powerful teleport ability to get them in – or out – of trouble quickly.

Juxtaposing the cool and calm Ronin is the kooky and reckless Bard. Prep the stage to tell a tale, or improvise an adventure on-the-fly. The Bard encourages out-of-the-box thinking with their ability to make any arena their theater. Set up your notes, dance around your foes, and cause utter devastation with your innocent melodies.

Combat Evolved – One of the big challenges we faced after releasing the Threads of Fate was balancing how players were scaling into NG+1 and beyond. By focusing on increasing Critical Strike Chance, players were able to blow straight through even the highest NG thread, which was not our design. To address this we greatly reduced the ways in which players can raise their Critical Strike Chance, as well as reduced its damage scaling. But nerfing players is just not fun, so to compensate we’ve introduced Skill Critical Strikes (Skill Crits for short). Every weapon and spell now has at least one way of dealing extra damage, which is recognized as a Skill Crit in-game. Successfully reflect a projectile as the Valkyrie, pummel your opponents and build up a high combo as the Boxer, or risk dashing towards danger as the Knight to empower your attack. Regular strikes are still as effective as ever, but more mindful players will be rewarded with that extra mileage. Those satisfying random Critical Strikes are also still around, but now when combined with a Skill Crit they will deal mammoth damage to your unsuspecting victims.

We also felt there was room for some enemies to grow in complexity, not just difficulty. This means going back to some of the classic enemies such as the floating eyeballs, and giving them new sets of moves and animations to keep you on your feet.

Classes Evolved - While it’s clear how different the Rogue Legacy 2 Class system is when compared to RL1, we really wanted to emphasize how different the classes are when compared to each other. And though the inclusion of Skill Crits has greatly helped with this, swapping your weapon (or spell) at a Curio Shoppe nullifies this distinction. So we are also adding Class Passives to the mix. For some classes this will be reflected with more extreme stat changes, like bonus health for the Barbarian, while others will gain unique abilities such as Mana Burn on all weapons for the Mage.

A Numbers Game – The changes to both Weapon and Magic Critical Strike Chance meant that Dexterity and Focus, the two stats that originally affected those numbers, also needed a new purpose. To that end, we’ve tweaked these values to now raise Skill Critical Strike damage. We’ve also taken the opportunity to improve Armor scaling, and tweak Equipment and Rune Weight costs. To the math heads, Dexterity and Focus now scale additively rather than multiplicatively. This ensures that pure Strength or Intelligence builds can scale into the late game. And with the addition of their influence on Skill Crits, Dexterity and Focus will have an impact right from the get-go.

A More Balanced World – With a heavier Metroidvania emphasis than the first Rogue Legacy, it’s much easier to get lost and overwhelmed in RL2. So we’ve gone through some problem spots again, to encourage newcomers to traverse the world in a specific order while still allowing veterans to break the rules. We’re also making the first few rooms in the Castle easier, to give players time to breathe right at the start. No sudden traps or intimidating Commanders will ambush unsuspecting heroes as they begin their adventure.

We’ve also seen that, for veteran players that have beaten the bosses and entered higher Threads, the challenge starts to sputter quickly. So we’ve changed how enemy HP scales when entering more difficult Threads. Enemies in higher Threads are now a lot beefier and deal more, and the burdens that modify these values have become a lot more threatening. Along with removing the abuse cases with Critical Strike Chance, players can no longer coast to NG+10 simply by one-shotting every foe they encounter. To balance this out somewhat, the XP algorithm has been greatly improved and now scales higher when entering NG+1 and beyond.

House Rules – Despite its seemingly cruel difficulty, since the beginning Rogue Legacy has aimed for accessibility. Beat the game in one life through sheer skill and willpower, or take your time and strengthen your heroes through an expansive upgrade system. Rogue Legacy 2 takes it to the next level with features like Trait Bonuses and Mastery. And though the Dragon’s Vow already makes the game loop easier for players starting out, we don’t think that’s enough. So we’re introducing House Rules to give you complete control over how you want to enjoy the game. If you’re constantly running into enemies you can turn off contact damage. Find a certain platform too frustrating? Give yourself flight. Or do the opposite and crank the difficulty by making enemies harder. House Rules are fully optional, so if you wish to play Rogue Legacy 2 the way it was originally designed, the choice is yours.

The Mysterious Traveller – As you navigate the treacherous territories, a new figure will appear from time-to-time to reveal secrets about this world’s past. Who is this enigmatic character, and what role do they play in the greater lore of the Rogue Legacy universe? Only time will tell.

Glossary – Rogue Legacy 2 has become bigger than we possibly imagined, and while we’re incredibly proud of how much we’ve squeezed into the sequel, this makes keeping everything clear for players a constant challenge. So we are unveiling a Glossary that holds pertinent information on some of the finer nuances to the game. No longer do you need to seek out oft-missed stone tablets at the Docks, as the Glossary can be accessed at any time from the Pause menu. Currently it holds details on status effects and Commander Buffs, but will also act as a place for any future information that is not easily found elsewhere.

DIFFICULTY ADDITIONS/CHANGES

• The first 3 rooms in Citadel Agartha are now pulled from a pool of easier rooms. These rooms will never have Commanders or difficult platforming sections.

• Hazards now deal percent damage to enemies so that high health foes don’t bounce on the hazard forever.

• Enemy Health and Strength scaling per NG+ now changes the base values instead of affecting the increase multiplier. This results in higher values per NG+ and greatly increases the effect of mods like Burden of Vitality.

• The game will always guarantee that one of fairy room in Citadel Agartha, Axis Mundi, and the Kerguelen Plateau pull from an easier list.

• Burden of Metal now reduces armor by a percent of Max Armor.

• Getting hit by an enemy with Armor Shred will now deal critical damage to the player (1.5x) if the player has no armor.

• Player Max HP mods are now applied additively instead of multiplicatively. This means Max HP mods will now give a little bit less health.

• Community: Changed Massive Commander Buff to increase health at the base level so that it scales properly with all other health mods on enemies.

• Added new visuals for Slug slime to make it more readable.

• Added the ability to hide Commander Buffs under certain scenarios. Zombies and summoned enemies (including ones in Fairy rooms) can now have Commander Buffs applied to them.

• NG+ enemy scaling has been increased. This is to accommodate the new biome that has been added.

• Heirloom rooms tweaked to make them even easier.

• The entrance to the Stygian Study has been tweaked to encourage players to go to Axis Mundi first, and a sequence-break mechanic has been added to the room.

CLASS ADDITIONS/CHANGES

• Bard Class added.

• Ronin Class added.

• Skill Critical Strikes added to all Class weapons. The method to trigger them differs for each weapon.

• Skill Critical Strikes added to all damage-dealing spells. The method to trigger them differs for each spell.

• Unique passives have been added to a number of classes.

• Boxer Passive: Is now Elusive and does not take contact damage from enemies when they are not attacking.

• Boxer: Combo stacks on the Boxer’s attack is now tracked on the boxer and not the individual enemy, meaning you can now attack different enemies and keep the combo tally going.

• Mage Passive: Mana Burn has been removed from the Mage Wand and is now applied to any weapon the Mage wields.

• Blasting Wand Redesign: Now generates bonus mana if it hits enemies. Now grants “Charged” to the user if they spend 50 mana or more.

• Gunslinger Passive: The Suave status effect has been removed from the Reload ability, and is now applied any time the Gunslinger casts a Talent ability.

• Gunslinger Talent: The Reload talent ability has been replaced with Makeshift Explosive.

• Holding the attack button with the Pistol while dashing or reloading will now cause it to automatically start firing as soon as possible, instead of requiring a separate button press.

• Pistol Redesign: Lower ammo count, lower range, MUCH faster reload times. You can now reload while dashing. We want to push the Gunslinger as a mid-range hero so we’ve lowered his down-time, increased his damage, and given him access to more mobility options.

• Duelist Passive: The Duelist now triggers the Charged status effect for a short period of time whenever a talent is casted.

• Assassin Passive: Class now has passive that increases Super Critical Strike Chance by X percent.

• Cook: Burn status effect is now applied to any weapon the Cook wields.

• Frying Pan Redesign: Now triggers the Charged status effect every time you reflect a projectile, but the damage of reflected fireballs has been reduced. Frying pan no longer applies burn on-hit.

• Spear Spin now grants 15 mana instead of 10.

• Cook: Collecting a meat health drop as the Cook now provides the health benefits even if you do not have max charges on your Healing talent ability. To compensate, pizza health drops no longer provide two charges.

• Cook: Fixed bug where getting a health drop as a vegan Cook would not refill one of your talent charges.

• Removed Dexterity and Focus from all Crit. Chance calculations.

SPELL ADDITIONS/CHANGES

• New status effect Dance.

• New status effect Vulnerable.

• New status effect Charged.

• New status effect Poison.

• Striking “Frozen” enemies now always acts as a Skill Crit.

• Burn now Skill Crits for the last few ticks of its duration.

• The Damage Mod for the Combo status effect now applies to all damage, instead of only weapon hits.

• Enemies with 10 or more Combo stacks now take Skill Critical Damage.

• Armor Break and Magic Break status effects no longer scale off strength and armor respectively.

• Sporeburst status effects explosion is always a Skill Crit.

• Windwall mana cost raised from 50 to 100. Damage increased. Cooldown timer removed.

• Energy Blast mana cost raised from 50 to 100. Damage increased. Cooldown timer removed.

• Freeze strike mana cost raised from 50 to 100. Damage increased. Cooldown timer removed.

• Magma Mass damage reduced, but now Skill Crits when falling downwards.

• Flamethrower now reduces movespeed while casting, but range has been increased significantly. Skill Crits after being active for a few seconds.

• Flamebarrier damage reduced, but now Skill Crits after being active for a few seconds.

• Thunderstorm now applies status effect Vulnerable to enemies struck.

• Poolball damage reduced, but now Skill Crits on the 3rd bounce.

• Timebomb now always Skill Crits.

• Gravity Well now strikes for an extra tick. Last remaining ticks always Skill Crit.

RELICS, RUNES, EQUIPMENT AND TRAITS ADDITIONS/CHANGES

• Added Obelisk Relic.

• Added Dream Catcher Relic.

• Added Cornucopia Relic.

• Added Serqet’s Stinger Relic.

• Heavy Stone Bargain tweak. If you have the pistol, it now reduces attack speed (range and ammo reduction removed).

• Heavy Stone Bargain tweak. If you have Hephaestus’ Hammer, it now reduces movespeed.

• Vanguard’s Banner has been redesigned.

• Lotus Stem has been redesigned.

• War Drum scaling reduced.

• A new Master Tier of relics has been added and multiple relics have had their costs rebalanced to accommodate it.

• Taking damage now removes all stacks for Glowing Ember Relic.

• Hollow Bones Gravity reduction reduced. You fall a little bit faster!

• Picking up mana potions now restores one charge of the Mana Damage Reduction relic.

• The Lotus Stem relic will now display a popup icon when it has saved you from taking damage. Community: Attempted fix for Gnawed Bone Relic where it would sometimes not kick in when picking up meat at max health.

• Fixed bug where Amaterasu’s Sun Relic was not using the correct value to determine how much each stack extended the duration.

• Community: Refactored relic and trait damage mods so that they now apply multiplicatively after all stat mods are applied, like Skill Tree Upgrades, Equipment, Unity, and Mastery. This increases player damage output overall, but also makes the numbers more in-line with player expectations.

• Community: Previously, only relics that changed player stats for a run were shown in the player info card, and others that only triggered in certain conditions (like every 5th hit) would not show. This inconsistency was confusing and not helpful, so relic and trait mod bonuses have been removed entirely from the player info card.

• ‘Relic Purified’ text and effect now appears when purifying a relic.

• Added Might Rune.

• Added Eldar Rune.

• Added Lucky Roller Rune.

• Added High Stakes Rune.

• Added Folding Rune.

• Changed Quenching Rune to increase Max Armor.

• Mana Regen rune stat gain has been reduced.

• Status Effect Duration Bonus rune stat gain has been reduced.

• Capacity Runes now raise mana by a flat amount instead of percentage.

• Certain runes have been redesigned to scale with a variety of player stats, instead of just Strength and Intelligence.

• Magnesis Rune now starts immediately unlocked.

• The list of Runes in the Enchantress shop is now sorted in a different, more convenient order.

• Rune entries in the Gear info menu now shows how many runes are currently equipped.

• Added Methemoglobinemia Trait.

• Added Perfectionist Trait.

• Added FND Trait.

• Added Clownanthropy Trait.

• Added Superfluid Trait.

• A new gear set has been added to the game.

• If upgrading a piece of equipped gear in the Blacksmith Shop puts the player past their allowed weight, a warning message will now appear before the purchase, and the gear will be unequipped if upgraded.

• Multiple Unity Bonuses have been changed.

• All gear bonuses have been buffed to make the early game a little easier.

• Drop rate table for equipment has been updated to encourage deeper NG runs.

ENEMY ADDITIONS/CHANGES

• Flamers should now keep moving forward with their flame attack after landing if they are knocked back.

• Changed Flying Skull logic so that they now continually try to press forward with their dash attack, rather than stop completely when knocked back. This makes them a fair bit more dangerous.

• Added new Large Flame attack to more advanced versions of Flaming Fireballs.

• Added new Storm attack to more advanced versions of Flying Hammers.

• Added new Spin attack to more advanced versions of Flying Daggers.

• Added new Burn attack to more advanced versions of Flying Axes.

• Tweaked the Fireball attack for Floating Masks.

• Added new Shrapnel attack to Walking Plants.

• Added new Explosion attack to Rocket Boxes.

• Added new Explode Shot attack to more advanced versions of the Eyeballs.

• Added new Tail projectile attack to Blob Fish.

• Added new Ground Slam attack to more advanced versions of the Blob Fish.

• Blob Fish can now walk on water and take no damage from hazards.

• Zombies now stay out of the ground when you activate them, and only go back under if you stay far away.

• Added new Lunge attack to more advanced versions Zombies.

• Zombies now have a delay before they can go into the ground or rise out of it.

• Zombies that dig underground now play a dust effect so you can still sorta track where they're going.

• New enemies have appeared in the Pishon Dry Lake!

GAMEPLAY AND MISC. ADDITIONS/CHANGES

• Add House Rules to the Pause menu. The following rules have been added:

  • Modify Enemy Health.

  • Modify Enemy Damage.

  • Toggle Contact Damage.

  • Toggle Flight.

  • Toggle Traits.

  • Toggle Difficulty Rating Display.

• Added the Pishon Dry Lake biome.

• Added a new Disclaimer window at start of game to help players that are experiencing input lag.

• Added a mysterious traveller that now appears around the world.

• Player HUD now fades out when colliding with player, enemy, or enemy projectiles.

• Minimap HUD now hides when colliding with objects like the Player HUD.

• Each level of the Charon stats bonus now gives the player +2 to Rune Weight.

• Each level of the Charon stats bonus now gives the player +2 to Armor.

• Gold given to Charon no longer counts toward future donation goals if you've exceeded the current donation limit.

• Player Crit. Chance can now exceed 100% to allow for Super Critical Strikes.

• Mastery XP algorithm now scales faster when playing in higher NG+. Upon first launching an old save file, extra XP will be awarded to compensate for the change in the XP algorithm.

• Community: If a player strikes a resonant projectile on the same frame that they get hit, the destruction of the resonant projectile should now take priority.

• Added functionality to change the colour of light text on light backgrounds and vice versa to improve text readability (for ex. swapping abilities at the Curio Shoppe). This logic needs to be added on a per-menu basis, so there may still be scenarios where this is not fully working.

• Charon Tribute Levels have been raised.

• Map icons now animate.

• Fairy Chests now have a chance of dropping Empathies. **Community: **Player damage retaliation no longer triggers if the player got hit but took no damage.

• Community: Rounded all Health and Mana gain up instead of down.

• The Threads of Fate have been unlocked up to NG +20.

• The level text is now hidden on Aether and Ore transfer Soul Shop entry descriptions.

• Added new Glossary menu.

• Merged Insight and Timeline menu into Quest menu.

• The damage text pop-up animation for when characters get hit now randomly shift slightly to the left or right to help readability when multiple pop-ups appear in rapid succession.

• Community: Added Unequip All Gear logic to Blacksmith shop.

• Community: Added Unequip All Runes logic to Enchantress shop.

• Community: Added Remove All Burdens logic to Threads of Fate.

• Re-enabled scientific terms in the Game Settings.

• Game Settings description text now uses Info icons instead Warning icons.

• Optimized world generation. (Still have a ways to go, though!)

• Improved generation of the Stygian Study and Kerguelen Plateau biomes, allowing them to sprawl out more horizontally.

• 10 new rooms have been added to the pool.

• New Fairy Rooms have been added to the pool.

• 30+ Rooms have been cleaned up to add new entrances, reduce spikes, and fix enemy placements.

• Divided Axis Mundi into two large rooms instead of one super-large room.

• Naamah Arena camera logic updated to make it easier to see below you.

• The Journal UI now shows "???" for missing journal entries / memories, instead of having an empty space.

• Master Smith has been added to the Soul Shop

• Relentless Resolve has been removed from the Soul Shop.

• Community: Skill Tree upgrades locked by a Soul Shop upgrade now display the name of the Soul Shop upgrade that needs to be purchased instead of being blank.

• Community: Entries in the Soul Shop now have a purchase level and are only unlocked as more items in the Soul Shop have been bought.

• Added The Dicer’s Den skill.

• Added The Quantum Observatory skill.

• Jousting Studies Skill now reduces damage taken when dashing.

• Resolve Up Skill max level has been reduced from 25 to 20.

• Increased the font size for the level text of skills in the Skill Tree.

• Gold and Silver Requirement for Combat Challenge Scars has been increased, and their maximum rewards have been increased as well!

• Community: Earning a gold trophy in a challenge now immediately unlocks all the empathies for that challenge.

• Community: Chests that drop empathies now prioritize empathy drops for challenges you have not already earned a gold trophy in.

• Taking damage in a Platform Challenge now adds to the timer.

• Added support for PS5 controllers.

• Removed the PS4/PS5 controller touchpad as a rebindable input. Pressing it will now always open the Map screen.

• Added a variety of new enemy sound effects.

• Added new ambient sounds for the Sun Tower.

BUG FIXES

We ran out of space and couldn't fit the bug fixes here, so to read more about them, check out the complete patch notes: https://roguelegacy2.com/patchnotes/v060