Hello everyone!

In today's devlog, we'll talk about the reworked Psyche system, which will be a part of our next major update, “Of Beasts & Sages”.

Let's start by exploring why the Psyche even needed a major revamp - as it stands, it's the oldest remaining mechanic, largely untouched since the early demo builds, despite having several clear flaws.

• The system was only partially complete. In our initial design, each quadrant of the Morale-Sanity chart was meant to include four distinct Psyche states. Unfortunately, we never got to implementing the states for the combination of low Morale and low Sanity. The same goes for the original vision of Hypochondria, which required functioning diseases before it could be properly added to the game.

• The concept of unique triggers for each state sounded great on paper, but in practice, it proved to be far too obscure - even for us as developers. Some states were extremely common due to their simple, easily reproducible conditions, while others were so rare and tied to such convoluted triggers that players had to resort to wiki guides and meticulous planning to discover them (shoutout to all the madmen who've actually managed to unlock the “Ups and Downs” achievement). The system simply didn't feel dynamic, varied, or responsive enough.

• While certain states had interesting mechanics, most could be boiled down to simple stat changes that didn't encourage players to adapt their strategy in any way.

• The majority of interactions with the Psyche system were primitive and lopsided: any horrors and hardships could be completely forgotten after a few nights of sleep.

Before anything else, we wanted to fundamentally change the focus of Psyche maintenance, making it a reflection of your mercenary's long-term living patterns rather than just a bar you top off by gorging on mindwort. 

The solution we turned to was to transform Morale and Sanity into compound stats, split into several segments with different caps and conditions for maintaining them. In this new system, both Morale and Sanity are half-dependent on the emergent situations your character finds themselves in and half-dependent on their sustained routine - such as sleep, diet, and so on.
In other words, a grounded and comfortable way of living serves as a sort of buffer, allowing the character to experience positive Psyche states even when facing all kinds of unpleasant challenges.

Morale is divided into three segments: Situations, Diet, and Sleep.

Situations cover everything that can affect your character during combat and exploration: killing enemies, completing Contracts, picking locks, disarming traps, landing critical hits, missing and fumbling attacks, losing Health, receiving debuffs, using consumables, eating some foods, and so on - all of it contributes to Situational Morale to various extent. Its maximum impact is capped at 50%.

Diet is responsible for 35% of Morale. Eating quality food will have a prolonged beneficial effect on your character's Psyche - but only if their meals are sufficiently diverse. If your merc eats nothing but fried eggs, bread, and meat skewers, they'll eventually grow sick of it, leading to a gradual decline of Morale.

The remaining 15% comes from Sleep. As you might expect, regular and sufficient rest will contribute towards this segment, while prolonged wakefulness will do the exact opposite.

Sanity functions very similarly, 50% of it is dedicated to Situations: this segment is negatively affected by killing humans but can be replenished by slaying the Undead and Proselytes. Other factors include having high Morale, close encounters with unholy magic and its abominations, head Injuries, grave robbing, casting Miracles, Backfired spells, using certain consumables, and more.

Another 35% is governed by Lifestyle, which includes work and recreation. This segment slowly decays over time but can be maintained by completing Contracts, chatting to NPCs, cooking, crafting, and praying. The list of relevant activities will be greatly expanded in the future - a good example would be the ability to go fishing or pay a visit to the Brynn Bathhouse.

The final 15% of Sanity is tied to Sleep - just like with Morale.

All in all, the new system is capable of providing vast roleplay possibilities and can be potentially integrated into other areas of the game. For instance, some conditions can theoretically influence different characters' Psyche in very distinct ways, which will give us a lot of tools to work with while implementing Traits and the Character Creator...

Let's move on to the Psyche states themselves and what makes them occur. The general idea was to standardize and greatly simplify the triggers - the result is three states per Morale-Sanity quadrant, each connected to one of the following conditions:

• No enemies nearby.The states associated with this condition often persist for a long while until replaced by something else.

• High health and multiple enemies nearby.Such states usually last for two to three fights' worth of time.

• Low health and at least one enemy nearby.
  These are the shortest-lasting states, frequently ending within a single fight.

When fulfilled, a condition will gradually contribute towards an invisible progress meter, triggering its designated state upon reaching 100%. Now, why don’t we take a closer look at states as a whole?

Optimism

Condition: no enemies nearby

Optimism has remained mostly unchanged: it grants bonuses to Experience Gain, Fortitude (which now also reduces Psyche loss from all sources), while also slowly restoring Morale, Immunity, and slightly reducing Fatigue.

Heroism

Condition: high Health and multiple enemies nearby

Heroism now scales with the number of visible enemies. Each stack of the effect grants bonuses to Weapon Damage, Magic Power, Crit Chance, Miracle Chance, Accuracy, and Life Drain. 

Additionally, killing enemies replenishes some Energy and grants a temporary boost to Healing Efficiency.

Second Wind

Condition: low Health and at least one enemy nearby

It would be impossible to count how many cinematic moments this effect has brought to the game, so we decided to keep it with only a few minor tweaks. Second Wind clears physical debuffs and replenishes Health and Energy upon activation (slightly less than before), then continues to replenish small amounts of Health and Energy every turn.

Other than that, it reduces ongoing cooldowns every turn and provides a once-per-activation 50% chance to avoid death. And finally, Second Wind can activate upon receiving lethal damage even if its progress meter isn't fully charged or another Psyche state is already present.

Megalomania

Condition: no enemies nearby

Megalomania is one of our most favorite states. Although it's often reported as a bug, it's still amusing to see how new players perceive their fake stat boost as real and genuinely begin to feel stronger, acting as recklessly as their character would. Because of that, the mechanic of falsely displayed stats remains exactly the same.

To further highlight the character's sudden surge of arrogance, Megalomania now includes a gradually increasing penalty to Trade Favorability and Reputation Gain, which resets upon completing Contracts. In combat, the character will have a chance to start loudly taunting enemies, potentially attracting unwanted reinforcements. And since the character deems caution beneath them, their passive chance to detect traps and hear unseen enemies will be reduced to 0%.

Frenzy

Condition: high Health and multiple enemies nearby

Frenzy provides a substantial boost to Weapon Damage and Magic Power. However, all attacks and certain abilities have a chance to target a random nearby enemy instead of the intended one - this chance grows over time but can be reset by skipping a turn.

Similarly, when walking to other tiles, your character may take a step toward the nearest enemy rather than their intended destination.

Death Wish

Condition: low Health and at least one enemy nearby

Death Wish is a reimagined blend of current Sadism and Masochism. The character suffers significant penalties to Healing Efficiency, Energy Restoration, Damage Taken, and Range - in exchange, they get bonuses to Life and Energy Drain that scale with Pain and missing Health. Life and Energy Drain also affect spell damage, although this bonus becomes weaker with each tile of distance from the target.

Killing enemies reduces the effect's duration.

Pessimism

Condition: no enemies nearby

Pessimism applies penalties to Experience Gain and gradually dampens the character’s Morale even further. It also reduces Fortitude, Healing Efficiency, and Fatigue Resistance - the penalty's severity scales with missing Morale.

Pessimism can be temporarily removed by using consumables that benefit Morale, such as alcohol.

Anxiety

Condition: high Health and multiple enemies nearby

Anxiety improves Dodge Chance and reduces Damage Taken, but all your attacks and spells will generate penalties to Accuracy, Fumble Chance, and Backfire Chance respectively. Any miss, fumble, or Backfired spell will reset the corresponding penalties.

In addition, each turn there's a chance for one of your Attack skills to go on a 1 turn cooldown.

Panic

Condition: low Health and at least one enemy nearby

Panic gives a one-time Energy boost, significantly reduces Vision range, while also lowering Abilities Energy Cost for each enemy in sight. However, each enemy within Vision will also continuously drain the character's Morale - and if it reaches zero, your mercenary will drop their equipped weapon.

This can be avoided by skipping turns, which replenishes some Morale and greatly reduces the effect's duration.

Paranoia

Condition: no enemies nearby

Paranoia causes your mercenary to quickly accumulate Fatigue, which in turn worsens the state’s penalties to Abilities Energy Cost, Damage Taken, Fumble Chance, and Backfire Chance.

Furthermore, the character may occasionally hear nonexistent voices, and some encountered enemies will be hallucinated illusions. If such an illusion reaches an adjacent tile, it’ll vanish, damaging your Sanity - alternatively, you can attempt to preemptively destroy it to replenish some Sanity instead.

Delirium

Condition: high Health and multiple enemies nearby

A character affected by Delirium behaves irrationally: depending on their missing Morale and Sanity, they have a chance to take a step in a random direction when moving, land their abilities on random tiles around the intended target, or drop items instead of using them.

Delirium also heavily randomizes all received Experience, regardless of its source.

Catharsis

Condition: low Health and at least one enemy nearby

Catharsis can be seen as a cousin to Second Wind, offering a chance at redemption when death is all but certain. Upon activation, it replenishes a small amount of Health and Energy, while also allowing you to replenish Health, Energy, Morale, and Sanity with each enemy killed - potentially letting you claw your way out from the pit of low Psyche.

Moreover, after it ends, Catharsis grants temporal immunity to negative Psyche states depending on how many enemies were killed over its duration.

That's all for now. In the next devlog, we'll take a closer look at Caves, their types, and what lies within - we’ll also reveal the release date for “Of Beasts & Sages”.

Until next time!