Arena.Xlsm Version 1.1 Released!
Arena.Xlsm Version 1.1b is now available here: Download Arena.Xlsm
Special thanks to my volunteer testers, and all of you who submitted feedback and bug reports!
Note: There is currently not a way to import your current v1.0 game data into v1.1. I’m working on this feature but it will take time and I didn’t want the Excel 2007 guys to have to wait any longer just to get started!
Content Updates:
- New unique items: EASTER EGG is now available in 5 different varieties: RED, BLUE, GREEN, SPOTTED, and STRIPED. Rare drop from killing a Bunny.
- New achievement: Poacher – Collect all 5 of the EASTER EGGS.
- New feature: Collections
- New magic melee item: Log
- Removed magic melee item: Baseball Bat
Fixes:
- All versions of Excel 2007 should no longer crash when killing an enemy. (Thank you for your patience!)
- Macros no longer appear in the viewable macro list. (If this doesn’t mean anything to you, don’t worry!)
- When the player dies with an “of Draining” or “of Exhaustion” weapon, the effects no longer persist after death.
- When the player dies with an “of Scouting” or “Fortuitous” weapon, the effects no longer persist after death.
- Alec Trevelyan will no longer respawn indefinitely when killed while exhausted. (I’m really sorry about that one!)
- Exhausting an enemy should now properly remove the Immune to Fire ability for all enemies.
- Healing yourself using a full heal item will no longer change the active target to yourself.
- Fire will no longer burn away HP boxes if an enemy is standing on top of them.
Balancing:
- “of Draining” weapon suffix effectiveness possibilities reduced from 1-30 to 1-7.
- “of Exhaustion” weapon suffix effectiveness possibilities reduced from 35-50 to 8-12.
- Alec Trevelyan will now restore his energy after staging his own death.
- The use cost of Bloodlust will now increase incrementally by 3 as you continue to use the spell.
EDIT: Replaced version 1.1 with version 1.1b. Alec Trevelyan should now die when killed the second time regardless of whether he is exhausted.
Cary Walkin.CA 
Is it correct that the Fire Bolt spell costs 0 Blood?
Yes, it was designed to be another alternate attack. I have not been getting much feedback so far that it is overpowered. If so, I can increase the blood use cost. Let me know what you think!
Thanks,
Cary
Its main advantage is the range. No, I don’t think it’s overpowered, only very useful.
Now Alec Trevelyan doesn’t return (after the first time). Thanks!
Any hints on how the 4 different endings can be reached? 🙂
The 4 different story letter endings are a result of how you’ve spent your skill points up until level 20. There are also 2 different epilogues after beating the game but I think I’ll keep how to get that a secret for a little while… 🙂
Pretty legit dog. Just beat it.
I think the game played ‘normally’ is probably impossible to beat, but there are some very cheap strategies in the spell book which absolutely make it impossible to lose.
Thanks! Please let me know what you feel is overpowered. That feedback is critical for me to get the balancing right.
Well, 2 things, normal fighting is to underpowered, whether it is melee, range, or whatever. A lot of spells are really under powered, the ones that stick out as good are the extra blood, the lightning bolt, and whatever the prior one was, as well as full heal. The rest were useless except for occasionally exhaustion or telekinesis on hp box.
Thanks, I’ll have a look at this for the next patch!
I jacked out nothing but defense and I was still getting rocked (Mind you I did beat the game through crazy spells)
From a design standpoint, spells should be necessary to get through the game (all players regardless of build has access to them) however no spell should be absolutely critical to getting through the game.
Absolutely critical: full heal, lightning/arcane, blood, increase, and invincibility.
Hi. I am really enjoying your game, but i found a really, really cheap strategy that seems to work every time. I simply construct walls on the front of each spawn point so that enemies can’t move and i slam them with firebolts until they’re dead. Too effective for its own good, takes the challenge out of the game 😦
Hi Greywolf,
While this is an anticipated strategy, enemies with a Chance to Teleport should be able to counter this strategy. (Also the reason why the arena changes every 5 levels, you’d need to setup the walls again, setting up effective walls can take up to 12 turns in each arena.) I may add a cooldown effect for the V1.2 to mitigate this or I may add a new enemy type that can walk through and/or demolish walls. Let me know what you think!
Thanks! 🙂
I think that having more enemies with the ability to move 2,3 or even 4 spaces (using up 1 energy) will close the players down meaning they need to concentrate on fighting instead of building walls.
The problem with this is that once the walls are up, it doesn’t matter how much the enemy can move (see the Fast ability when an enemy is trapped). Chance to Teleport ignores the wall and moves somewhere else which defeats that strategy. I may add a new enemy type that breaks down walls to add some variety to wall-beating strategies.
Cary, love the update and a lot of the bugs are fixed. One think I would like you to fix is the wall on the bottom (smile). The enemy are able to move diagonally through the curl on the smile. Surely this is designed to be a physical barrier. If not then the curl part of the smile doesn’t need to be there.
This is not a bug. The curl part of the smile is there to introduce the player to the enemy’s move AI. Also it’s there for cosmetic reasons because smiley faces are awesome 🙂
Never said it was a bug 😛 I do agree smiley faces are awesome but what I would like to see is them go around blocks, instead of phasing through the barriers. Still give the enemy diagonal moving to have that ability to close the player down, but not through walls.
This would create some problems with some of the existing arena designs. For example Arena 3 is designed like a large X specifically because the enemies can travel diagonally and the player can’t which creates a sense of unease. I’ll think about more things I can do with the enemy pathing AI.
Aww… drain nerf makes me sad. I liked to stick with an X of draining for melee, while heavily enchanting a ranged weapon (preferably fire arrows) with damage and range. Enchant Weapon, Enchant Range, and Fire Bolt (mostly early) were the only spells that seemed necessary, although Teleport could have saved some full heals.
Your strategy is still a viable strategy even with the drain nerf, just now you may need to incorporate more spells such as Encumber. 🙂
Hi, Cary!
I love the game, but I think I found a bug. The ranged attacks just f**king doesn’t hit!
I don’t know if this is only on the start game, but any of ranged weapons hits, even on enemies without “immune to ranged attacks”. Only misses.
For ranged attacks you need to aim/target the attack at the enemy by selecting the enemy. This is in the first tutorial letter that you see. See the wiki here: http://arenaxlsm.wikia.com/wiki/The_Basics In v1.2 I’ve changed the ranged attack output to be more descriptive.
Hi Carywalkin,
Arena.Xlsm is a great game. I think you are a brilliant chartered accountant. I really want to know the visual basic code of the game. Could you please give me your password? please email it to linhdh@live.com.
Thank you in advance!
Hi Linhdh,
Thank you however I will not be sharing the password for the raw game file. I will be posting code samples on my site which should be of interest to anyone who wants to look under the hood.
Thanks,
Cary
I’ve gone through the game 7 times now – definitely I can’t find the secret arena, and I’ve tried quite a lot of things. I also tried the new version and can’t even find the hint about it.
As for strategy:
– The biggest thing is Sap Energy, or weapons with a similar effect. Using that to root enemies in place makes the game a breeze.
– Bloodlust definitely gets you an unfair advantage quickly.
– If you get a weapon early on with an awesome enchantment, just keep it forever for the effect and make the damage/range better with blood points.
– I honestly rarely bother with any offensive spells apart from Fire Bolt early on. The rest are unnecessary if you exhaust an opponent and jack up the range on your ranged weapon.
Also, I have never figured out how to trigger the 3x/4x/5x base damage achievements. After many hundreds of fights on all the passes through the game, that totally escapes me.
this requires the use of various item damage modifiers including: the spells Enrage and Curse, critical hits, enemy ability vulnerability and item damage modifiers on items.
Sap Energy is countered by enemies that are immune to spells, but i’m thinking of adding a new enemy type that will add variety to countering that strategy.
Do you feel that blood lust needs more balancing? I’m trying to find a balance between useful and critical to use. It appears your strategy was very spell/blood dependent which is why bloodlust would be needed.
Also, when you can’t find a location, you use a map. 😉
But my point is if the enemies are closing down the opponent that quickly, the amount of time required to create all the walls is virtually non existant, and your 5 level redesign means the effect is not permanent. Your thinking of the end result, not how long it takes the player to get there.
Cary, finally beat the game after getting stuck in the first version with an exhausted Alec! Thanks for fixing that. I found using construction in front of the enemy spawn points makes things pretty easy. Might be a balance issue to consider. I hesitate to suggest because it might turn out to be evil, but- have you considered random spawn points?
This is going to be something that I will be changing in V1.2, the goal is to still have walling off the spawns as a valid strategy, it’s just going to be harder to execute it effectively. Thanks for the feedback! 🙂
You should take part in a contest for one of the finest blogs online.
I’m going to recommend this web site!
I can’t save my game. It will tell me that my folder is macro free. How do I fix that?
I’ve never seen this error before. Please email me a screenshot so that I can try to assist you.
What email can I reach you at?
https://carywalkin.wordpress.com/about-2/
I might just be dumb, but I can’t seem to get an email to send to you. Will you email me, so I can just reply with the picture?
What email can I reach you at?
Been playing this quite a lot recently – Basically, Sap Energy + Fire Bolt is overpowered.
Majority of enemies aren’t immune to spells, so you simply sap energy, then fire bolt from afar – Takes time, is a bit boring, but works well.
I think weapons that give extra blood are not needed, purely because when I get one it pretty much guarentee’s I can win as long as i’m not stupid.
Ranged I think is slightly underpowered, but thats just because of a lot of ranged immune enemies, and melee is underpowered as hell – There is no reason why i’d let them get into melee range unless I have no choice, such as the “Immortal Demon” – In which case I just shield, and slash away with ease.
This all said, your game rocks 😀 SO much fun!
Thanks for the feedback!
Fire Bolt was rebalanced in V1.2 with a cooldown effect however in combination with Sap Energy the rebalancing does not really have an impact as once the enemy is exhausted, it’s very easy to burn them to death. Sap Energy and Energy Leech will be more costly to use in V1.3. The reason for this change is that I want Sap Energy + Fire Bolt to be a legitimate strategy however it should be more difficult to execute than it is currently.
The balancing of Melee Attacks is something that I’m always looking to improve. In V1.2 I added the lunge attack which was an area where Melee was weaker than ranged. In V1.3, I plan on making the Telekinesis spell work much better with Melee Attacks by attacking an enemy with your melee weapon once you pull them to you with Telekinesis. Under the hood, Melee attacks have a significantly greater chance to critical than ranged attacks but I can always play with that number to improve melee’s effectiveness. Also consider part of the Melee balancing is that there are no Immune to Melee Attacks enemies in the game, which means investing blood in improving your melee weapon will be effective against all enemy types.
Ok, I have got the Map,
I have killed the ultimate evil with it – no secret arena
I have tried to use it to shoot every square on 3 different arena layouts – no secret arena
I have tried to use it to open the chests – no secret arena
I have put out all the fire on the ultimate evil level with it – no secret arena
I have whacked up its stats to range 35 and Sparkling enchantment, THEN hit every square in the arena, tried opening chests etc – no secret arena
I have killed every monster with it – no secret arena
I am minutes away from a breakdown lol
Where is iiitttttttt! lol is it just random in a chest somewhere?
I’ll send you an e-mail with the solution. I definitely don’t want you to have a breakdown!
Hi Cary,
As an accounting graduate from Sudbury and an Excel fan, I love this game! I too need some help with that Secret Arena. I’ve tried just about everything that “Vic” has and also had no luck. Can you send me some help?
Hey Cary, great game. Ive wasted hours on it now. Is it just me or does the demolish walls spell not work? I get a message stating that my target of the spell is not a valid cell. Even after I put the spell target cursor on a wall and even my ranged attack cursor on the same wall too.
Thanks! The demolish walls spell will work only on standard brown walls (and on cracked terrain but that does not appear to be your issue) it will not work on any other target. Please make sure that you are playing on the most recent version of the game (V1.3). You will be able to identify the spell target by the flashing dotted square.
I hope this helps, let me know if you are still running into an issue.
Dude pleeeeeeeeeeeaaaaase send me a pvt saying how to find the secret arena, I’ve just search the entire internet looking for it and I’m supposed to be studying. I’ve tried everything and just need to know.
Use THE MAP item to find a secret location on the spreadsheet that you can teleport to. That will allow you to access The Secret Arena. Now go study!
Does this work with Microsoft Office 2000?
Sorry but the game is only supported for Microsoft Office 2007, 2010, and 2013