 Hello everyone and welcome back to enter the ether of the podcast all about the upcoming third-person MOBA ethereal clash of souls I am your host the man goose joining me as always It's my friend and co-host jelly knees. How you doing jelly? I'm fantastic man goose You're here looking like a lumberjack today a little bit with your red coat there, but I'm doing fantastic other than you're trying to scare people on Halloween. I guess nothing like looking like a little nothing I'm looking like a lumberjack. I mean Why do you got to put that lumberjacks like that? I did I just said you looked like one jelly hates lumberjacks hot take for this particular episode So we got a lot We got a lot to get to we got a lot to get to you guys had your your big community corner and There was so much information more than we could possibly get to on this show Without it turning into the community corner yet again Seriously like that you guys added and removed a bunch of items Yeah, I highly suggest anybody go go watch that community corner because it was very exciting the main things I want to touch on are of course the The streamer thing on November 6th the stress test on the 20th. If you guys don't know yet You probably should know they're Ethereal is having a stress test on the 20th. They're go register on their website You see a red you go to undying games.com. There's a register button You hit that register button and you register for the newsletter and then you're in I had a lot of questions on that people were thinking I didn't get the register for the thing. I just registered for this newsletter No, you're in once you get your email in the system You're registered for the stress test. So you guys are going to start it up There's no set time on it Just until the game breaks And you're just going to keep adding more and more people in until the game breaks For lake for lack of a better way to put it the hope is to break the game Okay, right is that we're going in wanting to essentially get a predecessor out of the deal Right that we're going to go in there and hope something Catastrophic happens ideally it won't Right because that'll mean that we're up to snuff. We're good to go But we're not expecting that either right when it breaks. That's something we're expecting to happen So we want to find where the weaknesses are in our system so we can get those fixed So going into the pre alpha. It's as stable as possible Since this is your you guys's first time releasing this game to the greater community I'd probably be a little more lenient on you guys than I would predecessor like predecessor already had Some successful stuff going on, but uh, this will be the first time You guys are out there. My question is what if it doesn't break? How long is it gonna go? Then we'll have to figure out what's a good time in theory We may do all day that saturday or we'll do the whole weekend or something. We'll keep on adding people. I mean so far Since we made the announcement. We've had like 500 600 people signed up to the newsletter that already weren't a part of it So I was gonna say there was already thousands and thousands that were part of it already. Yeah Yeah, so we've seen those numbers boost up So we've definitely got a large group to work with that we can increase over time and get as many people in as possible Right and patrons get moved to the front of the line as far as picks concerned or concerned, right? That's true. Yes So what we'll do is we'll go through the patreon first And then go through an email all of those people They're access to get in for their account all that good stuff And then from there we'll go to the newsletter Removing those same emails out and then randomly select from the who's in the newsletter. Okay I mean that's a good. I mean I would I would normally say then that then that's pretty much just paid access But you don't have to be a patron to get into this stress test And you do have to reward your patrons in some way you need to reward the people that are giving you money if you can That's a nice little reward for them We don't want to exclude non patrons But we yeah, like you said, we wanted to be able to reward the ones that are helping support the game and have been for the last month So on november 6th is the streamer event where various streamers are going to be able to have access to the game They'll be able to stream record. That's a ballsy move by the way, but uh They'll all be able to stream so you'll get your first taste of the game there Get a get a look of well not your first taste But you you'll get a better feel for the game through that and gets a wider variety of opinions And then after that you can try and play the game yourself. So A lot of exciting stuff going on for ethereal man Yeah, absolutely. I'll be curious to see how that for the minions poll looks this week after all these announcements Yeah, we'll see we'll see um Yeah, I mean like you said the extra life event we'll have right now. We've got 15 streamers. I think it is That's what I was about to ask Um, and we're still looking for more ideally if we can get two full games of content creators and streamers That's what we want to do Um, so the more the merrier in there if you guys are listening and you're a content creator reach out to me I'm happy to help coordinate that a little bit more Um, but it should be super fun lots of great content creators coming to help promote that It's also for extra life, which is great on that aspect as well So it should be a fun time So are the streamers that are streaming are they locked into the extra life thing? No, they're not they if they don't want to participate in the extra life thing They don't have to but undying games specifically will be doing an extra life event that day I'm gonna put this out there right now because I don't give a shit It'd be a real dick move if you streamed ethereal on the extra life day event and didn't participate in extra life I'll leave that to the content creators I mean, come on. Yeah, I agree with you 100% Help the kids out extra life is a is a great charity if you guys don't know about it It got formed a long time ago. Uh some little girl Uh had some disease. I forget what it was. I haven't looked into extra life for a while But a bunch of gamers got together and was like helping her to like send her games and then that has just Spiraled out of control in a great way to where this huge organization that helps fund Research and in treatment for for sick children that can't afford it and uh, yeah, it's it's a really good thing I'm glad you guys are participating in it once again, and I'm happy to participate in it as well Are you gonna be streaming jelly? Are you gonna be streaming for ethereal? I will be doing both. So I will be streaming for ethereal during the actual content creator event And then afterwards I will probably stream on my own channel Just to continue the extra life day. Okay, can I have dibs for being on your team? That might be up to the matchmaking because I think we're gonna let matchmaking decide who goes where Let's group up. I want to stack I want to get real sweaty for this extra life event All right, perfect So, yeah, this is amazing news. This is like I mean I think you guys should have had the stress test on november 28th Because that I think that was the date that the original alpha was supposed to be back in like 2018 Like We didn't say what year But no november 28th falls on a saturday, which is perfect people won't have to take I mean, some people will have to take the day off if they want to participate, but Most people are awful in weekends. Yeah No, it should be a fun time We're excited to Have more people and play the game stream the game the whole nine yards Get it out there get a bunch of feedback and return Right across the board whether that be That their system is struggling in certain ways or that the this myth is broken in certain ways or whatever it may be Right, ideally we found 98 of that but there's always inevitably going to be something Oh god, yeah Us and the testers haven't found out right that Someone's gonna do something we're gonna be like, hey that might be a little strong We may may need to tune that down a little bit Or just somebody likes to hit their buttons in a certain way and then that ends up Breaking like one of the movement abilities or something you never know you never know. Yeah Um, I just it's just it's amazing. This this is amazing news Like I've been following a theory for so freaking long just hoping waiting Dealing with people in my comments like this game is never gonna come out, you know And finally we're here. We're getting it into the community's hand. This isn't this isn't a pre alpha Like they said, it's just a stress test But it is the first time that the greater community will be able to uh to play the game and um Yeah, I think it's going to go well just judging from because this isn't like Like with predecessors alpha, they're very very first alpha back in march of 2018. They um They didn't have that much testing going into that alpha. They had like a little bit of content creators coming in but That there wasn't that much testing whereas with you guys you've had like You started out with like a small group of testers and you've you've built upon that So it's not like you it's not like You guys don't know that the game doesn't work or something like that like with with predecessor We found out that they had huge Lag issues and and and netcode issues So you guys already kind of know a little bit of what you're doing So i'm really rooting for you for for this test to go well Yeah, absolutely, and that's we've implemented the mini map the mini map will be live for Both extra life and the stress test We've got some class abilities that are on the way that we're hoping to have implemented by then But it's going to be pretty close But there's more features getting added still even before that stress test That even the community hasn't seen so there'll be some surprises going into that as well I mean, I would I would think that you you probably don't want to add too much before Things that will work consistently by that time will be okay. Okay good Like the mini map is is fully functional with fog of war the whole nine yards right now So that's okay already in the game as of today. We can already use that so that's good to go. All right now The one of the other things you guys were kind of talking about was the addition and removal of a bunch of items We've already talked about this one here. Like you guys balanced everything out So I don't really want to get into the item conversation so much if you guys are really curious about that I would say go watch it's it's a youtube video now or you can just watch the replay on twitch or what have you and Yeah, I think that would be the best way to do it What I would love to get into here Is grognark You guys revealed The kit for grognark and it is fucking insane Dude, he's gonna be crazy Let's how about you just go down the list real quick just list off his abilities And what he's got going on and then we'll just talk about it All right So like we said before with the pre alpha seven they were intentionally generic Right that we and you and I've talked about this man goose that the pre alpha seven were generic So anybody could pick them up and have characters that they feel relatively comfortable picking up and playing the first time From here on out these myths are going to get crazy Occasionally grognark. I think is the first huge example of that. So his passive is strong as rock He gains stacks of damage resistance over time up to a max of five Every time he takes an instance of damage He'll lose a stack but take reduced damage based on the number of stacks he has So just a basically flat damage nerf across the board for anything that hits grognark, which is insane The other thing that I am so happy to finally be talking about for this myth Is that he rolls around to the map And I can't wait. We've been talking with like testers and stuff about that the roll mechanic Oh, i'm losing you Hello Okay, go for it Okay, but so the roll mechanic is going to be super fun We're going to go through he's going to be able to roll around But he's not going to be able to jump or be knocked up by abilities So he's going to be knocked up knock up immune and then he can't jump anywhere It's just his roll. He can roll off the side of lanes and then land somewhere else But there's no actual jumping itself. Okay So the special ability is one we all know and love or know and hate is rampages rock throw essentially is that grognark is going to be able to pick up a rock out of the ground Toss it at an angle if it hits somebody it's going to stun and do damage And the downside to this ability is that while he's carrying the rock he can carry it indefinitely But he has significantly lowered move speed while he does He can't roll around. He can't move quickly. He's going to be Very slow roaming around with this rock until he throws it Once he does throw it then his movement speed will slowly ramp back up to his full movement speed His first ability or his cue rather is load stones So every few seconds a load stone is going to a basically a rock is going to come out of the ground and start floating around grognark These rocks themselves can block projectiles So if a projectile shoots at grognark, it'll block it'll block that projectile and the rock will be destroyed And it's similar to like this. I always think imagine it this way the shells in mario kart when they spin around you When you have any shells if you run into somebody else with one of these rocks, they will take damage and destroy that rock So you can run right up to somebody and have them spinning around you and deal damage that way as well That's just a passive. Let me interject a real quick question. Did they spin around him while he's rolling? Uh to be determined Okay That would be very mario kart-ish that they'll they'll kind of hover around him So he'd be the the rolling hedgehog that he becomes yeah with rocks floating around him um The active for load stone is that he's going to take one of these rocks and launch it in a straight line in front of him And then dealing damage to the first target hit So it's just a straight skill shot that does damage when it collides with the first target So it's balancing that give and take of keeping them up passively to block projectiles or run into people with Versus using them actively to just throw damage out at somebody else His ability to is great divide great divide essentially spawns a wall out in front of him At a set distance and then for every level of the ability the wall gets larger So it'll start out relatively small like it's not going to block off lanes or anything like that But eventually it'll get to the point where you can do some pretty serious like uh terraforming of the map and blocking off certain paths or blocking off certain areas, which will be super cool And the cool thing about the wall as well is because we have berserkers who can destroy walls All berserkers can destroy his wall So there's a direct counter if there's a berserker on the enemy team And grognar throws his wall up the berserker can come up and break it down real quick Right, so it's you have to judge as grognar where the enemy berserker is and whether or not this wall is effective To use right now. So it's a little bit of that give and take with the ability itself He's got massive rupture, which is a Zone in front of him will he'll pound the ground dealing damage in a zone in front of him And then there'll be like a sweet spot at the end That if they're an enemy myth is in the sweet spot they get pulled toward grognar So kind of like he's he's shifting the plates and they kind of pop up and knock someone backwards towards him He can then use great divide behind that throw loadstones the whole nine yards Then his ultimate is litho quake This one also has a passive and an active The passive is that grognar reduces the amount of damage he takes from basic attacks And then reflects that damage back to whoever dealt the damage to him And that's just across the board once he has his ultimate. This is a passive that is always active So this he can use this to just mitigate that damage from a carry that's popping off or malaya Who's running at him and just slashing at him a lot. He's really intended to be a counter To those basic attack heavy characters of which we have a lot right now in the pre alpha 7 So he's going to be really effective at kind of mitigating a lot of that damage and helping keep his team alive And then the active is that he will He will root himself in place and then kind of smash the ground dealing damage in an aoe around him and slowing enemies that are in that zone as well Okay, I didn't understand that with the passive. So he just constantly reflects Basic attack damage. Yep. Holy shit. How are you going to balance that? It's similar to the item that's already in the shop that can does the same thing at basic attacks get reflected damage So it's just figuring out what that balance of percentage is And if he builds that item The effect being doubled needs to still be balanced as well. So okay, so it's not what that looks like It's not full damage. Like don't he doesn't know. Okay. God. No, it's a it's a percentage It's very very okay. Because when you say reflect basic attack, I'm thinking full damage And it's like that would be Stupid deals a 1200 crit straight back at him. Yeah, he kills himself. Exactly. Exactly. I don't know Yeah, it'll just be a poor it'll reflect a portion of the damage that grognar takes Okay. Wow. So that's quite the interesting kit um Right out right off the bat. I just want to say that You guys are already breaking your own mold a little bit Now this is just an assumption that I I made I think you made it as well It was that knights would be the tanks of ethereal And that berserkers would be the bruisers Now grognar is a berserker, but he is definitely a tank through and through the tanks tank. Yeah, like he Will absolutely be able to survive most things you throw at him for quite a long time Now some of my concerns with This kit It seems like it will be hard to balance Player frustration both playing as him And playing against him Because him just being able to just block projectiles with his loadstones That's going to be that's going to piss you off whenever you try laying laying an ultimate or something Um, and the other thing too is that he moves slower than other characters unless he's rolling So Trying to catch somebody In a fight without rolling is going to be very very frustrating um Yeah, there's definitely A lot of tweaking that's going to have to go in once you have him in testing Right is that he's going in and making sure that all of these things feel rewarding to play as and against like for the loadstones if Dante uses his right click he can burst down all the loadstones And then now grognark doesn't have any to cast his ability with yeah, but then don't he's silenced Exactly, but so it's it's that give and take of yeah You're negating a basically an entire ability of somebody else And then you're silenced for a couple seconds or if you're just using five basic attacks in general at the late game stages Yeah, right. So it's it's finding those those interactions that can be rewarding for both sides of of the encounter My other concern is that he's going to be an early game tower dive terror Like he'll be soaking up tower shots with his loadstone He'll be grounding pounding keeping people slowed He could throw up his wall to keep people retreating too far behind their tower He could just set in that tower and take that damage and And with especially with the grounded pound the tower is going to keep refocusing on him Like if somebody else comes in and deals damage It's going to be really easy to juggle that tower damage Back to himself which he wants because he's got those loadstones up Taking those instances of damage. So I think that's a bit of a concern But also he's going to be a terror as far as when you're underneath his tower. He might be able to pop you into into his tower Yeah, he's he's a he's a tower god both With his own towers and against towers. Yeah, and that's Something we've keep we're keeping in mind as well with his loadstones He is how will tower shots affect those because tower shots are projectiles But there's a chance that him being able to block tower shots is just ridiculously strong So towers just penetrate loadstones. He just gets the damage straight up Or a tower shot takes three loadstones to be blocked Right, so you can you can kind of finagle that a little bit to find a more balanced state where he's not taking five tower shots with no repercussions for it at all right, right it's finding finding a way to do that kind of stuff The other thing too would be would loadstones deal damage to minions because that way because you can walk through a minion wave and all five loadstones are gone Or um, I they target him and like all the minions firing will definitely do damage to minions And then the floating rocks I think is going to be a balanceable thing of how How easy is it to hit them on minions if you're just walking past a minion wave or or not? So it's just looking at all those things as well Awesome Now the the cool thing by the way litho litho quake the lithosphere is the very top trust of the of the earth if you're wondering why it's called litho litho quake instead of earthquake But uh The cool things that I want to do with them just right off the bat. I want to build move speed grog grogdark It just sonic my ass around the map Is especially if I can have loadstones going just wow Like a freaking motorcycle as much move speed as I can stack on him And it'll be awesome. I love it. I don't think it'll be effective, but it'll be fun Now I want a game mode where you can pick alternate myths right clicks and get liya's tailwind on grogdark Going the sonic build. Yes fly down The other thing that I really really want to do is since the lanes are split and up above each other I want to stand on that top lane and launch rocks at people like a like a freaking artillery battery I think you guys mentioned that I think in the uh in the community corner, but as soon as I That was revealed. I thought of rampage like getting in a high position and throwing that rock Oh, man, I not only am I going to get on the highest point. I'm going to put my wall up underneath myself so that I'm even higher Then I'm going to throw rocks at people You're gonna 100 see montages of grogdark's just tossing rocks from fire down to void and waiting for them to collide somewhere else The other thing I thought of immediately too is Whenever you're trying to take a an objective like the ice wyvern or the fire wyvern um Whenever the enemy team is trying to push in the to to gank you while you're in that objective you just throw a whole wall Nope, sorry That goes both ways So ice wyvern especially because it's got those two drop downs on either side and you can't get back out Right if they go in through either of those you just block off their only exit and now they're trapped in there with you What are they gonna do here? The old horshack Not trapped in here with you. You're trapped in here with me It's gonna be such a cool ability to see how people use it and make it effective I really like the uh, the skill shot portion of his I forget which ability is the one the The earthquake that goes out and at the very end it knocks people back. Yeah his e so hit that's massive rupture Yeah, that that's really going to separate the good Grogdarks from the bad ones the ones that are able to hit that max distance It hit the right distance to actually catch people Especially if they're running It's basically it's the way I envision it at least is like a grucks pole But with a sweet spot as the pole instead of just the whole cone just bringing people back to you But it still deals damage if you Yeah, absolutely if you don't hit the thing. Yeah, that's that's pretty damn cool. I really like that. Um He's just a cool This is a really cool kit all around like That's the thing with with the therial characters you look at these kits and you immediately start thinking of cool shit that you can do with it and We've had a lot of conversations With the community about having that extra ability right because we have an extra ability than most mobas out there Right and part of that allows you to have A diversity of skills, but that all are cohesive together at the same time That allow for a bunch of different combinations of abilities to come through. Yeah I also like the flavor of him not being able to be knocked up Hmm He's heavy. He's a giant rock monster. He's like he still takes the like he still takes the damage from a knock-up, but he doesn't Yeah, so tallows wouldn't be able to His eve too. Yeah, wouldn't be able to knock him up Exactly or heavens blade. You're not building heavens blade which every couple seconds or every four basic attacks You knock up the person you're fighting. Yeah, heavens blade wouldn't work on grognark Man, I built that on malaya one match and it was fun Uh, but that's just grognark hard counters that item, right? Like it's just that easy as a character Which is cool and scary at the same time, right? Yeah, and it starts giving you those options of Okay, they picked tallows If I pick grognark his e2 will only do damage, but I'm not going to get knocked up. I basically mute some of his cc In in my pick so it's going to be really cool to see how that works as well Which is nice for a tank having just a little bit of unstoppable Yeah, very cool stuff, um Yeah, is there anything else you wanted to talk about what what what what are we missing here? What did we miss? Uh, I think I mean we've gotten most everything I think already we talked about grognark extra life the stress test Um, we can talk about the myth update if you wanted a little bit of like the changes we did to the myths Yeah, that those though like people haven't been playing the game. So I don't think they I don't think that's as important of a thing to talk about is the changes because like it's like They're not like us where we know every in and out of the game at this point I don't you do that's why I want to be on your team But yeah, at the risk of this going for hours and hours Because we could talk for hours and hours about this community corner. Like I said, uh, I'll have the Is this will go to my channel this week or your channel? Okay. Yeah, I'll have the um The link to that video in the video description below if you guys want to check that out But I think that is going to about wrap it up jelly anything you want to plug Uh ethereal clash of souls the stress test on the 20th extra life If you again, if you know streamers that you think would want to be a part of it have them hit me up I'm coordinating with a bunch of people. So we're happy to get as many people in To that as we can because it should be a fun time. So we're excited. Yeah, definitely do that. Um Now is go register on the website like I mean you might think oh, I might not be off that day. What blah blah blah It's worth a shot. It's worth a shot. Just go just go register to the register for the newsletter, which If you guys ever send out a newsletter, I don't even I don't check my one month. Okay. I've never checked my fucking email Yeah, but yeah, even even then, you know, just just just do it Now is your chance to finally join us as we enter the ether And man Shout out the channel members foolish blood hunter jelly knees me all mixed for men and stun