Happy 1-month anniversary to all Dueslists!

In today's dev blog, we're looking forward to the future after one month of launch. What were the highlights so far, some fun stats about our Duelist's performance, as well as to what to expect for the future of Neoduel: Backpack Monsters.

Despite some of bugs and issues in the launch week, we are generally pleased with how the release went, and for that we'd want to take this time to thank everyone from your Duelists to our dev team and publishing partners. Everyone involved and our community has been incredibly receptive and transparent with questions, concerns, and recommendations, and we have taken everything on board which has shaped the future of the game.

THE 1-MONTH LAUNCH ANNIVERSARY RECAP:

Since the launch on September 30th, we've released a healthy spread of patches both fixing key issues, but also adding new features, Cosmions, Upgrades and much more. In case you missed the news, here's the recap:

• New Fusion Element and Cosmions: added on launch day, the Ice element brought a change to the meta for those that have been with us since the early testing and demo days. We're really glad people are finding some fun synergies with Ice Cosmions and making use of the Frostbite keywords. Fun fact, Ice Cosmions were the least changed in terms of stats and effect since the launch.
  
• Complete Codex: Throughout the month, we've updated and improved the Codex adding a bunch of new features to help newcomers and even veterans familiarize themselves with as much of the game as they can. Accessible from the main menu as well as during games, the Codex explains all game mechanics, features a full list of all Cosmions, Fusion recipe lists, as well as some fun flavor text for our cosmic critters.
  
• New Cosmions!: While the launch date Ice Cosmion drops upped the full roster by 13 new creatures, we also introduced a new Pedro evolution, a Duopon fusion and a new neutral Cosmion known as Naci. The latter might seem cute, but he's a good counter to those Frostbite builds.
  
• New Game Mode The main core mode of the game is a ranked run where your performance affects your daily, weekly and all-time elo standing and rank. We've introduced recently a Casual version of that mode, to make sure people had a way to practice without the fear of dropping that much in Elo rank.
  
• So many QoL updates!: This is where our Neoduel community really shined, and we'd like to thank them once more for their input. Throughout this past month, their feedback helped us optimize some features, and we've introduced new icon designs, optimized UI, lots of visual changes, keyboard shortcuts, fusion lock, and so much more.

THE NEXT MILESTONE UPDATE: ENTER THE DEPTHS OF THE SWAMP

Now what we've done this recap, we've been working on our next milestone patch, set for launch in November and it's going be to one where Duelist will need to master the art of hostile environment survival: Swamp.

While we originally planned to have Lava as our next Fusion Element in our roadmap, the current meta with our players had us change it to Swamp. We won't delve that much into the Element for now and its associated keyword, but know that this decision of a change is better for the health of the current builds. Expect new themed Cosmions, Upgrades, and some other bigger surprises for our version 1.1 of the game.

THE 1-MONTH LAUNCH UPDATE: AVAILABLE TODAY FOR FREE!

Thursdays are our usual weekly update days, and we figured in honor of one month celebration - and Halloween - to give you some free treats:

• FRESH NEW UPGRADES
  
  
  Pethor's release 2 weeks ago might have opened the flood gate on our upgrade factory, and
  we're introducing today more than 10 new upgrades (12 to be exact) with this update. They're pretty much fun, and most are focused on defending yourselves from specific Elemental keywords, while other add some new gameplay mechanics like some unique Zones. Here's the full list and their icons (from left to right in order):
  
  
  • Base Armor (available in stage 2 and 3): You get 40% less damage from Acid
    
  • Elephant Skin (available in stage 2 and 3): You get 40% less damage from Spike
    
  • Iron Wool Jacket (available in stage 2 and 3): You get 30% less damage from Burn
    
  • Water Repellant (available in stage 2 and 3): Opponent's Water Cosmions trigger 30% slower
    
  • Rubber Shoes (available in stage 2 and 3): Electrocute stuns you for half the normal value (0.5 instead of 1 second).
    
  • Not so fast, bardner (available in stage 2 and 3): Inflict 1 Clumsy for every 3 Haste your opponent gains.
    
  • Electrical Shield (available in all stages): Every time you trigger Electrocute, gain 20 value of shield.
    
  • Butterfly Effect (available in stage 1 and 2): Your Plinns now have 300% Critical Damage and you also gain 2 additional Plinns.
    
  • Dragonic Armor(available in stage 1): For every dragon you have, gain 50 Shield at start.
    
  • TURBO matchiroS (available in stage 1): Matchiros now consumes 0 Energy and you also gain 2 Matchiros.
    
  • Kloody Skies (available in stage 1 and 2): Your Kloods trigger 1 second faster and you also gain 2 Kloods.
    
  • I am an Economist (available in stage 1): Your Stonks Stripes and Protecc gives 1 additional coin and gain 2 Stonks Stripes.
  
  As usual, don't forget to check out the Codex for all these new upgrades, or to refresh your memory on certain mechanics.
  
  
• CODEX FILTERING SYSTEM
  
  
  A much requested feature by our Duelists, but one that was a bit harder than expected for us. Say goodbye to endless scrolling in the Codex to find a specific Cosmion to see its stats, effects or refresh your memory. We've added a simple filter system where you can now search by Elements, to quickly see only Ice Cosmions and Essences for example.

BONUS: FUN STATS!

We thought to end this dev blog with some interesting stats about this one month of launch. I'm sure you're eager to discover things like which Cosmion or Upgrade is the most used, how many players have done flawless runs and other things.

• The most recuring win/loss ratio in a single run is 6 to 5. About 9% of the entire player base finish their run with this score.
  
• Only 0.25% of our player base is above the 7000 Elo rank. Talk about le Slimi du Slimi!
  
• Elemental Synergy is by far the most popular Upgrade picked in the Shop!
  
• So many Duopon picked, BUT it ranks 10th out of 10 most used Cosmions.

• Casual mode loop bug: Fixed a rare bug when after losing a casual game, you sometimes had the option to continue, resulting in a loop where you could play your final fifth try infinitely if you wanted to (you could still give up).
  
• Steam Deck bugs - KNOWN ISSUE : Steam Deck running on Linux means that lots of those OS bugs are affecting Neoduel "on the go". Expect to see black bar in places where some animations are not loading correctly, and there's small instances of cloud save not working as intended, creating a different instance of your save on the machine. We're currently investigating a fix.
  
• Achievements - KNOWN ISSUE : We recieved small reports of certain complex achievements like "Fusion Complete" are not triggering upon completion. We're currently investigating a fix but require more data so don't hesitate to open a support ticket on Discord.

That’s it for now Duelists! From our small but dedicated dev team, our publishers and other partners, we would like to thank you all for supporting us in this launch, and sticking around to support and help us.

Until then, for the most recent news, join the NeoDuel community by following us on Twitter[x.com] or hopping into the T4W Discord server[discord.gg]. Please contact our support channel on the T4W Discord server[discord.gg] if you need assistance with typical technical issues or if you are unable to resolve your problem.

Salutations, Duelists! As of today, October 29th, 2024, a hotfix patch has gone live for NeoDuel: Backpack Monsters. To experience the most recent and up to date build of NeoDuel on Steam, make sure you update your game. Here's what to expect in this hotfix patch:

• Zone links: Fixed a bugged where zone links would not work as intended in some rare situations.
  
• Verdantclaw effects: Poor Verdantclaw keeps on being semi-unreliable these days. We've fixed an issue where Verdantclaw's effect would not trigger in a game.
  
• Game Freeze: We've seen reports of the game freezing for up to 30 seconds at first launch. While we couldn't replicate this issue, we've done some coding optimization on the main menu to make sure it doesn't happen. If you do face this, please open a support ticket in our discord server to be able to track better these and find the possible flaw.
  
• Steam Deck bugs - KNOWN ISSUE : Steam Deck running on Linux means that lots of those OS bugs are affecting Neoduel "on the go". Expect to see black bar in places where some animations are not loading correctly, and there's small instances of cloud save not working as intended, creating a different instance of your save on the machine. We're currently investigating a fix.
  
• Achievements - KNOWN ISSUE : We recieved small reports of certain complex achievements like "Fusion Complete" are not triggering upon completion. We're currently investigating a fix but require more data so don't hesitate to open a support ticket on Discord.

For the most recent news, join the NeoDuel community by following us on Twitter[x.com] or hopping into the T4W Discord server[discord.gg]. Please contact our support channel on the T4W Discord server[discord.gg] if you need assistance with typical technical issues or if you are unable to resolve your problem. Till then, keep on dueling, and good luck!