PATCH 0.5.1 (57565)

(2024.12.20)

This is the final Brewing update, at least for the Christmas/New Year break — unless there’s a critical gamebreaker, that is. We’re back on January 7th :)

Frostbite:

• Reworded Mysterium II description to accurately describe its effects.
• Increased base damage by 10%

Designer Note: this makes bullets boosted by Mysterium I actually impactful, as they reach new damage breakpoints and require less bullets to kill most enemies

• Increased the maximum duration of Mysterium II freeze. The duration now increases much more for each bullet spent after the 3rd one
• Freeze duration boost increase from Mysterium II now also appllies to the frozen trail from Mysterium III
• Max magazine size have been decreased from 8 to 6 bullets, so it’s easier to maximize freeze duration

Designer Note: our plan for Frostbite was to make players choose between optimizing their damage and their freeze potential, based on when they decided to reload. Before, the freeze increases weren’t meaningful enough, and it rarely made sense not to reload after the boosted bullets were spent

• Changed Stigma Diabolicum damage multiplier from 1.6/1.7/1.75 to 1.2/1.3/1.35

Designer Notes: Stigma Diabolicum was always meant to deal around 25% more damage than ordinary weakspot (crits) hits. However, until recently it dealt around 25% more damage than a bodyshot instead. We fixed that, but mistakenly we did so on two fronts – the damage multiplier was increased, and the damage multiplier started using weakspot damage instead of bodyshot damage as its base.

Updates and fixes:

• Fixed an bug that caused Siren’s Shell not to work when used in certain scenarios
• Heavily optimized Vendor’s UI refresh logic. Buying multiple items in quick succession should no longer affect your framerate.
• Angelus’ shield now correctly processes pushback from enemy attacks starting from 1st Mysterium (was: only on 2nd and 3rd).
• Actually changed Incense costs, as indicated in yesterday’s patch
• Fixed incorrect Siren’s Shell pickup prompt
• Toll Collector in the Castle has extra collision around his legs now and shouldn’t kick the player upwards when approached

PATCH 0.5.0 (57550)

(2024.12.19)

This is the Brewing update official release. Here’s more info about it.

See the Preview notes below for all new features, fixes and updates. The section below just notes the latest update since the Brewing Preview2 build.

Known Issues:

• We are aware of an issue where the Siren’s Shell does not always function correctly when summoning the Galley Slave. Temporary Workaround: Use the Siren’s Shell only when you have 2 or more shells in your inventory. Note you can also challenge the Galley Slave by cleansing the region (collect all seven Manifestations).

Updates since Preview2:

• Fixed a blindspot in front of Scarlet Coast Vault final sanity draining statue
• Increased the parry window of Angelus Mysterium III from 0,3s to 0,5s
• Multiple changes to Incense resource requirements:
  • Restoration Incense: Removed Moonflower requirement
  • Patience Incense: swapped the number of required herbs between Angelica and Eryngium.
  • Transmutation Incense: Lowered Maiden’s Hair cost from 3 to 2
  • Bulwark Incense: Changed Eryngium requirement for 1 Moonflower requirement

Designer Note: Restoration Incense seems less useful than the other incenses in practice. It might be reworked in the future, for now it’s relegated to a “backup incense” role with lower costs than the other incenses.

• Increased Parasite’s Mysterium II range boost per enemy killed from 0,5m to 1m
• Echo: lowered Mysterium III bonus damage from +100% to +50%

Designer Note: while removing double bullet cost in the last path made it so Mysterium III no longer wrecked your ammo economy, doubling the weapon damage just for sliding was a bit much. Lowering the bonus damage should keep Echo’s damage more balanced, while not influencing breakpoints too much. We might tweak that value further after more playtesting.

• Fixed a bug which made it possible to display Pre-Run Screen of a locked level.
• Fixed an UI animation glitch which occurred when you switched levels in Level Select too quickly
• Witchfire Orbs Arcana now correctly scales granted Witchfire
• Witchfire Orbs no longer leave a red light on the ground after disappearing
• Fixed incorrect horizontal and vertical pushbacks from enemy attacks
• Added “Healing Effectiveness” property in the Preyer’s Stats menu
  • Healing Effectiveness is based on Healing level and affects all healing sources, with the exception of Healing Elixirs
• Fixed a bug that was causing Galley Slave to be squishier than intended
• Fixed a bug that was causing Dimarcher model to be invisible pre-cutscene
• Fixed being able to trigger Dimarcher without opening the barrier
• Fixed Angelus runes glowing without any mysteriums unlocked
• Fixed Angelus protecting from fall damage and eating poisonous mushrooms
• Fixed Frostbite Mysterium I activating when spamming reload button
• Fixed Frostbite Mysterium III being lost after weapons swap
• Slightly redesigned art direction for Hermitorium moods

PATCH 0.5.0 The Brewing Update Preview2 (57481)

(2024.12.18)

Gear

Frostbite:

• Slightly increased the size of the third consecutive Perfect Reload window
• Frostbite Mysterium II is now properly treated as an Ice weapon for Arcana
• New vfx added to indicate that the next shot will freeze the enemy
• COMMUNITY SUGGESTION: Improved Frostbite Mysterium II:

“Perfect secondary reload grants Freeze shot, stronger with emptier clip, and further increase the damage of boosted shots” Designer Note: the shrinking perfect reload window keeps the mechanic tense, and we’re happy about it. But, as you pointed out, it felt weird to be punished for following the intended gameplay loop (scoring consecutive perfect reloads). This change should keep the risk-reward ratio more balanced before you upgrade Frostbite to Mysterium III (which brings more perks to consecutive reloads)

Angelus:

• Fixed a bug that caused Angelus to be treated as a Decay weapon for Arcana selection

NEW ITEM: Siren’s Shell.

• Used to summon the First Familliar.
• This ability has been removed from the King’s Bell.
• Siren’s Shell will now drop from chosen Scarlet Coast enemies and can be bought from the Collector once you unlock it.

Echo:

• COMMUNITY SUGGESTION: removed the double shell cost from Mysterium III activation

Designer Note: This old vestigial design didn’t really make sense considering Echo’s very limited ammo pool, and was put into spotlight thanks to renewed interest in Echo’s Third Mysterium thanks to the introduction of the Meteor Ring

Parasite:

• COMMUNITY SUGGESTION: Added new effect to Parasite Mysterium II:

“When an afflicted enemy dies, their ailment jumps to the nearest foe with increased potency and range.” Designer Note: This means it will be as difficult to start the ball rolling on feeding your Parasite, but will make it easier to keep it going once you feed it up a bit

Alchemy

• Alchemy ingredients can now be purchased from the Collector. You need to unlock them first with high enough Gnosis, and they are limited in supply and by no means cheap.
• Increased Corpse Wax droprates from Minor enemies

Random bugs:

• Fixed a bug that caused the Scarlet Coast Vault boss to start with only 1/8 of its max health.
• Fixed some missing materials on item pickups

Fixes:

• Fixed Herbal Brew not working with angelica and new herbs
• Fixed Galley Slave stun animation playing too slow
• Fixed Galley Slave tornado floating in air
• Fixed enemies being able to deal damage to the player mid cutscene
• Fixed a bug that caused Shieldbearer not spawn during its Calamity
• Fixed Knight Melee not registering while to close to the player
• Fixed Enemies randomly despawning on Tower near ruins
• Fixed Dimacher mistakenly attacking not only the preyer but also their framerate
• Fixed Parasite sometimes not disappearing
• Fixed Parasite disappearing abruptly
• Parasite decay now starts after reaching the enemy instead of the flight start
• Fixed Frostbite first Mysterium effect being possible to activate on vanilla gun
• Fixed Frostbite reload bar appearing when attempting reload with no ammo left
• Fixed coordinates teleport debug being available in releases
• Fixed incense staying on the player after death
• Witchfire at risk and incense information is now hidden on pre-run screen when starting the first run
• Research info is now hidden on the pre-run screen until player unlocks Workshop
• Reworked meteor ring trail to drop patches of fire instead of a continuous volume
• Fixed Frostbite’s widget not refreshing action icon ([R] on KBM and (X) on gamepad) after changing bindings
• Fixed other instances where action icons were not immediately refreshed (e.g. tutorials, tabs in menu, Inventory, Level Select etc.)
• Fixed a bug with white rectangles being shown in multiple places in UI when there was no binding to a given action
• Fixed a rare occurring bug with gamepad RB/LB icons being shown in menu tabs despite using KBM
• Fixed Henbane’s 3rd Mysterium effect that was setting Elixir’s healing duration to incorrect values.

Audio

• Removed the repeated whipping sounds that played while being buffed by the magic item Scourge
• Designed a sound that plays when using the consumable item that allows you to summon the Galley Slave
• Fixed an issue that caused some water sounds in the Castle level to be inaudible

PATCH 0.5.0 The Brewing Update Preview1 (57369)

(2024.12.17)

Our first preview (aka beta) version of an update! Namely, The Brewing (0.5.0) update.

Highlights

These are the main features of the update. And now for some details…

New Feature: Alchemy

• Added a new station in the Hermitorium which allows players to craft Incences
• Incenses offer various improvements to healing during the expeditions
• To craft an Incense, unlock it by finding a Recipe then gather necessary ingredients
• Recipes are hidden all around the world
• 7 new ingredient types added to the game

Alchemy UI/UX

• Removed the old elixir crafting station, as health elixirs are now refilled automatically and without any Angelica cost
• Removed elixirs information from the Pre-Run Screen (‘heading to’ panel, displayed just before starting an expedition), as you always start the expedition with maximum number of health elixirs
• Added a new incense burning station in the Hermitorium
• Added a new Alchemy screen which lets you browse through your recipes, see the details of a given recipe, read Alchemy-related tips for every ingredient, and burn a selected incense
• Alchemy screen remembers last selected recipe to speed up the process of burning your favorite incense before the next expedition
• The smoke in the room directly reflects whether any incense is currently being burned or not
• Your currently burning incense and its description is also displayed in the Preyer Screen for an easy access during expeditions
• Added incense information in the Pre-Run Screen which reminds you to burn an incense before starting a new expedition

Elixir resupply

• Base elixirs no longer need to be crafted, and are always refilled when coming back to the Hermitorium. Thank you, the Wishing Table.
• Angelica is now used in Incense crafting

Gear

• New Bolt Action Rifle: Frostbite
• New Auto Rifle: Angelus
• 2 new Relics: Scourge, Parasite
• 2 new Rings: Meteor Ring, Dynamo Ring

• Belladona now properly display extra perks when upgraded to Mysterium II/III

Designer Notes: due to time constraints, Belladona shipped without additional perks to unlock. This was quickly fixed, and new perks were introduced in the post-update period that followed The Wailing Tower update. Unfortunately, the Fetish description was never updated, so players had now way to know about the new perks

• Ring of Thorns: new model added that better suits its redesigned function
• Ring of Excreta and Shadowmist Ring got their models swapped

Designer Notes: these were always their intended models, there was a mix-up that was overlooked until now

• Stigma Diabolicum: Improved damage multiplier when hitting the Stigma (it was always intended to be a boosted weakspot damage — as it works as an additional weakspot — but by mistake it was boosting the bodyshot damage)

• Ice Stiletto: now uses the correct icon in the Inventory

Boss Reshuffle

The work on Scarlet Coast and Irongate Castle boss fights is not done yet, expect further tweaks and changes in the WMU. Spoiler Warning!

• Galley Slave is now the Scarlet Coast Familiar
  • Animation refresh
  • His existing attacks logic got updated – his attacks are now harder to dodge, and sometimes have some new logic
  • Added 1 new attack and 1 new movement ability
  • Changed his spawn location and conditions
  • Adjusted the amount of health and damage dealt by the attacks

• Dimarcher is now the Irongate Castle Familiar
  • Animation refresh
  • His existing attacks logic got updated – his attacks are now harder to dodge, predict player movement, and linger for longer time
  • Added 1 new animation as an alternative to one of the existing attacks
  • Added intro cutscene (known issue: missing sound)
  • Adjusted the amount of health and damage dealt by the attacks
    
• Shieldbearer is now a Calamity (unlocked in the late game)

Boss stun gameplay

• Exposed Stun bar
• Removed the ability to insta-stun boss through the Stun Soul mechanic:
  • Now destroying boss Stun Souls just deals stun damage
• Significantly lowered Physical Status Damage Resistance (aka stun resistance) alongside a big slowdown to stun recovery on both Familiars
  • This should make stunning bosses through means other than Stun Souls more viable.
  • This change affects only the two Familiars for now, but will most likely get in some way propagated to other bosses to even out the playing field

Various updates, improvements and bugfixes:

• Firepower Boost arcana now correctly scales weapon damage.
• Overlapping rotation inputs from mouse and controller no longer break the camera rotation speed.
• The effectiveness of all healing sources is now correctly scaled by Preyer’s Healing level and other modifiers from gear and effects.
• Stack counter on the item icons in the inventory now includes the stacks stored in the stash.
  • Item tooltip displays how the stacks are divided between the player’s inventory and stash.
• Fixed a bug that allowed the player to dash backwards or sideways during slide while using “Double tap direction key” dash mode.
• While using “Double tap direction key” dash mode with the Shadowmist ring equipped, the player is now directed towards the enemy only when dashing forward.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the player from picking the Sceptre again after failed expedition on the Island of the Damned.
• Optimized some particle effects on their higher LODs
• Lowered the Vulture position whiled aimed down sight to provide more clarity while aiming
• Fixed an issue that caused the AI to run a wrong projectile test when testing for viability of a projectile attack
• Fixed issues with a few crouch anims playing at wrong speeds

UI

1. Menu
   • Optimized GPU performance when the menu (Preyer Screen / Inventory / Map etc.) is opened
   • 3d rendering in menu: player postprocesses (such as low health / low stamina) no longer affect player model in Preyer Screen and items models in their respective Inspect Screens
   • 3d rendering in menu: fixed a bug which caused semi-transparent materials (such as glass) to be displayed incorrectly. As a result, Euphoria of the Dying’s inspect screen no longer shows a broken model
   • 3d rendering in menu: improved support for antialiasing, resulting in smoother edges, particularly noticeable in inspect screens of items such as Angelica or Incantations
   • 3d rendering in menu: fixed method of displaying shadows which are used to improve Mysteria readability. They were (incorrectly) applied to 3d render of every item, resulting in strange, darker areas noticeable on some of them. This is no longer the case, they’re applied only to weapon models, as intended.
2. HUD
   • Added a new widget used by Frostbite (the new gun) and displayed on the screen during its reload
   • Sanity bar: improved animations and color change logic
   • Sanity bar: adjusting its position to reflect the number of Boss Bars visible on the screen. They are no longer displayed on top of one another
   • Boss health bar: added stun bar above the boss’ name, similar to major enemies’ healthbars. This should make it easier to know when a boss is going to be stunned during intense boss fights
3. Level Select
   • Reworked level indicators (vertical light beams) – they now use a new VFX, have better performance, and better logic under the hood
   • Changed levels order (this is only a cosmetic change of where they’re placed in the vista visible from the Hermitorium; gameplay-wise, they’re unlocked in the same order as before)
   (edited)
4. Preview version support
   • Added a popup in the main menu which tells you that you’re on the preview branch of the game
   • Added a popup in the main menu which lets you transfer your savefiles from a stable branch to a preview branch
   • Version indicator displayed in the main menu and in the pause screen shows whether you’re running preview build of the game or not
5. Other
   • Added a black fade when upgrading Gnosis, making a smooth transition from one state of the new evolving room to another
   • Added support for monochrome icons in item slots – currently used only by Alchemy screen

Hermitorium Visual and Environment Storytelling Updates

• New weather system with four states for morning, day, evening, and night.
• Two distinct moods per weather scenario, triggered based on run outcome.
• Detailed vista featuring accurate world locations of existing levels.
• Boss trophies now displayed in the Gun Room.
• New Alchemy Station and Wishing Table added.
• Lit candles in the Level-Up Station reflect prayer level.
• Gnosis Room reflects the current Gnosis level.
• Mirror remains inactive until requirements are met.
• Arcana stays locked until requirements are met.

Optimization

• Hermitory level optimization pass

Sound

• Fully redid the ambient sounds set up in the Hermitorium to reflect the moods and times of day portrayed by the graphics. (More details for the soundscape of the Hermitorium’s interiors are already in the works)
• Designed sounds for the new weapons
• Designed sounds for the new relics
• Designed sounds for the new rings
• Designed sounds for the interactions with the Alchemy system
• Designed sounds for the Galley Slave’s new abilities
• Designed sounds for Dimacher’s new abilities
• Redesigned the sound for the Galley Slave’s Tornado attack
• Redesigned Dimacher’s locomotion sounds. (This is a work in progress. More improvements to his set of sounds are coming)
• Redesigned the stinger that plays when a Boss spawns in

Music

• New set of short music pieces by Mikołaj Stroiński to accentuate the Hermitorium’s sad moods

HOTFIX 0.4.6.56132

(2024.10.22)

• Witchfire Guard and Foul Stimulant are now mutually exclusive and cannot be used at the same time during expedition
• Fixed percentage bonus formatting of Firepower Boost Arcana
• Ring of Thorns: Now properly grants Ice Arcana
• Ring of Thorns: Fixed an incorrect ability description on Mysterium II
• Sigma Diabolicum no longer grants Decay Arcana at Mysterium I
• Obelisk event no longer shows up in Madman’s Dream
• Obelisk event no longer activates from inside of the island’s Vault
• Lowered the Mysteria I activations for Psychopomp upgrade from 40 to 20
• Fixed a misaligned crosshair on the All Seeing Eye ADS that was causing it to aim at a lower point then all other weapons
• Tweaked the ASE front sight to make it more visible
• Fixed Calamity objective UI showing a completed objective if you re-trigger calamity just after completing the previous one
• Fixed a bug that was causing player health drop below 0 if the Assassin calamity spawned in the same run in which Foul Stimulant was used, causing the inability to shoot and look up/down as well as other issues
• Text polish pass on the new stuff
• Fixed the Calamity’s double rewards bug
• Fixed visible crossbow’s projectile when interacting with the Collector or Gnosis book

PATCH 0.4.5.56088

(2024.10.19)

Highlights

• The Island now has a new Monolith event, a mini-boss and a new area around the galleon with an extra event. A tease of upcoming new things hangs nearby.

• Experimental: added Crosshair Spells Notifiers — a widget which is displayed around the crosshair and notifies you when one of your spells recharges. This feature is experimental and hidden by default, you need to turn it on in Settings -> Gameplay -> Experimental section. (Please note that this feature isn’t guaranteed to stay and may be removed in the future.) Tell us what you think, we’ll be happy to read your feedback!

Gear

• Ring of Thorns
  • Ring of Thorns has undergone a thorough redesign.
    • Designer note: Ring of Thorns requires a very risky gameplay style, and thus needed a much bigger reward for playing well – hence the redesign.
      
• Whisper
  • Whisper can once again stun Familiars and Faithfuls, but it takes a few shots, depending on the target’s size
    
    
• Hangfire
  • Removed a hidden “Fourth Mysterium” from Hangfire, that ballooned its single target damage out of proportion.
    • Designer’s note: Early in Hangfire’s design process, it had a different Mysterium II:“Explosions get stronger the more bullets are lodged in the same enemy.”We changed it to the current version, not only because it wasn’t particularly engaging and was pretty overpowered with the right setup, but we also found out that making Hangfire a more crowd-fighting oriented hand cannon gave it a stronger identity. The problem is…that Mysterium was accidentally never removed from the game, So both versions of Mysterium II activated when the gun was upgraded. Whoops.
  • Hangfire had its single target explosion damage and stun damage adjusted: subsequent explosions on the same target deal less and less damage.
    • Even with the “Fourth Mysterium” removed, Hangfire’s single target damage and stun potential was still just a tad too high for its desired place in the combat sandbox. This feature was implemented so it could be reigned in without compromising its crowd-fighting capabilities
  • Increased Hangfire explosions base stun damage on initial target by 300%, and lowered Hangfire’s bullet stun damage by 20%.
    • This makes Hangfire actually better at controlling spread-out crowds with explosions, while not being overpowered on single targets thanks to the new stun damage decrease on subsequent hits.
  • Increased ammo reserves from 90 to 120
    
    
• Flamebreath
  • Increased Mysterium II bonus damage on Burning targets
    
    
• Midas
  • You can no longer trigger Mysterium III repeatedly by interrupting reloads.
    
    
• All-Seeing Eye
  • One more bullet in the clip ^{community suggestion}
    
    
• White Raven’s Feather:
  • Cost on Unveiling Arcana lowered from 2 to 1
  • Slightly lowered the amount of Feathers dropped
    

• Foul Stimulant:
  • Now grants +100% witchfire for the whole run duration, in exchange for lowering health and stamina by 50% and preventing the corpse from spawning on death.
    
    
• Witchfire Guard:
  • Now protects all volatile witchfire on death, but there will be no corpse left behind to recover treasures from
    
    
• Merchant’s Stone
  • Now grants a significant heal, but consumes three random treasures from the Inventory
    

Gameplay

• Fixed Stake Gun projectile launch location
• Fixed an issue that caused enemy pathing to fail following the target
• Fixed Buckler Swordsman collision to correctly reflect the mesh ^{community request}
• Fixed teleporting enemy losing the elemental status applied prior to teleport ^{community request}
• Removed some clutter from the Adventure Log, like mentions of locked supply chests
• Tweaked some enemy drops to be more appropriate to their difficulty
• Fixed a bug that caused “New Elixir slot unlocked” to display on incorrect levelup
• A thorough balance pass has been made on Arcana parameters
• Adeptus Major and Adeptus Minor had their description tweaked to better describe their use
• Adjusted some Mirror Lock switch locations that were unreasonably hard to pinpoint. Fixed reward chest that spawned turned the wrong way around
• Improved Rarog’s Egg event rewards ^{community request}
• To avoid confusion, changed the Soultrap’s “Event Failed” notification to “Event Finished” when you fail to fill up the Soultrap before the timer runs out and only get partial Demonic Ammo rewards.
• Absorbing Manifestations now heals significantly more.
• Potions now drop slightly less often from chests
• A malevolent being now watches for Manifestations left unused for too long…
• When inspecting the monk statue in the Tower, golden footsteps now lead you to the scepter making the statue puzzle easier
• Witchfire cost of cleaning areas with the scepter has been lowered from 5K to 2K
• Witchfire cost of Gnosis Upgrade has been raised to limit accidental upgrades
• Added the the second ship objective for Gnosis I to clear up any confusion
• Ambush at Tower Gate has been polished and is a bit more newbie friendly
• Fixed Ice Sphere and Heavy Gunner’s shield being valid targets for the stake
• Fixed Firebreath second mysterium always being active
• Fixed Firebreath second mysterium affecting enemies that weren’t already on fire
• Fixed multiple gameplay related crashes.
• Fixed broken spells inputs after switching spell casting mode back and forth in the settings
• Fixed locked dash direction on controller when switched dash mode for KBM
• Enemies no longer lose their elemental statuses when teleporting
• Severed Ear’s reload trigger is no longer spammable due to reload interrupts
• Fixed conditions for 2nd Mysterium activations objective for Hypnosis
• Fixed sometimes incorrect notifications about available Ascension
• Rotten Fiend is no longer a valid target for lightning jumps between enemies
• Casting Rotten Fiend when another one is already active will correctly remove the previous one on any Mysterium, rather than only on the highest one
• Fixed Rotten Fiend’s Decay aura
• Fixed a crash happening when some inputs were left unbound in the settings
• Fixed hidden weapon bug when trying to swap weapons and using Elixir at full health
• Fixed Silent Secondary corrupted Arcana preventing swap to Demonic weapon using Quick Swap input action
• Fixed loot drops for Sister, Devotee, Wretch and Sentinel enemies
• Trying to cast a Spell while using Dash will now correctly cast it right after dash ends instead of failing
• Stun bar UI above enemy health should now correctly display its value after switching targets
• Spell cooldown icon will no longer appear as ready when in fact it’s still recharging (micro cooldown bug)
• Increased the threshold required to change platform input icons using mouse or controller thumbstick
• Moving the cursor with thumbstick while pressing (A) will no longer display KBM icons on the UI
• Improved rebinding so that you can override other binds
• Added better Sharpen option (lets you restore the soft pre-patch look)
• When interacting with the Gunroom, you will now see notification icons (little stars) leading you to the new gear. No more guessing whether ‘new gear’ means new weapon, spell, relic, fetish, or ring. Little star (and corresponding objective: ‘New gear awaits in the Gunroom’) will disappear after you hover a new item with your cursor — there’s no need to equip it if you don’t want to.
• Added a new objective displayed in the Hermitorium when it’s possible to start researching a new gear (weapon / spell / magic item). This should help new players understand how Workshop Mirror works. It should also eliminate instances when you start a new expedition only to realize you forgot to start a new research. (However, please note that objective is only displayed when there’s gear to be researched — incantations are currently ignored, as they are not limited and can be researched infinitely.)
• Added safeguard in the logic of displaying map icons, which hopefully will fix the bug with the icon with empty name and description.
• Settings / Controls: missing bindings are now displayed in red, making them easier to spot.
• Settings / Controls: added warning popup which is displayed when you try to go back from the settings, and some of your bidings are still missing.
• Settings / Gameplay: changed the names of ‘Screen effects’ setting options to be more descriptive.
• Adventure Log should no longer display duplicate messages.
• Optimized Adventure Log memory footprint.
• Updated credits.
• Fixed mouse cursor hotspot being in wrong position across various screen sizes
• Fixed Striga’s projectile sometimes phasing through enemies
• Better collision detection for Striga’s projectile
• Slightly lowered tracking on Warrior Priest and Maceman attacks to make dodging them more viable in intense combat scenarios
• Slightly lowered aim leading for Devotee projectiles and made her more inclined to push closer to its target
• Fixed camera shake rotation on melee attacks from sides to better reflect hit impact direction
• Fixed All Seeing Eye position while aimed-down-sights ^{community feedback}
• Shieldbearer’s Shield dome radius increased by roughly 20% to make staying in it a slightly more managable task

Sounds

• Added ambient sounds to the Island of the Damned
• Designed sounds for the Obelisk scenario that occurs in the Island
• Replaced the All Seeing Eye’s radial damage sound
• Designed an additional radial damage sound for the All Seeing Eye’s decay shockwave
• Added a new sonic element to part of the reload sounds for Hangfire
• Tweaked the attenuation range of Hangfire’s explosions
• Improved the sonic transitions that occur when the preyer teleports in and out of the Wailing Tower
• Tweaked the End of Cooldown sounds for the Charged Melee, Light, and Heavy Spell abilities to make them more audible
• Tweaked the attenuation ranges of many of the Proximity Mine sounds
• Fixed a small issue present in the sound of the Proximity Mine’s explosions
• Made a change so that the Bells that anticipate a Calamity remain audible for players who mute the game’s music
• Fixed an issue that was causing Cornucopia’s casting sound to get interrupted

PATCH 0.4.4.55505

(2024.09.27)

Highlights

• QoL Hermitory Upgrade: all stations regenerate your stamina when interacted with (Community Suggestion)
  
  
• Cursed Treasures:
  • Fixed inaccessible Treasure locations
  • Tweaked Treasure spawnpoints that were particularly hard to spot
  • Tweaked Treasures’ look so they fit better with the environment
  • Slightly lowered the chance that multiple treasures will spawn right next to each other
    
    
• Whisper no longer stuns Familiars / Faithfuls, knocks them back instead
  • Please note that technically this is not a nerf but a bugfix. The weapon always had “capable to stunning almost any enemy” in the description.
    
    
• Both open and locked supply chest now drop more White Raven Feathers
  
  
• Changed the order of early Light Spell research order, so the player gets access to more elemental variety earlier. (Note: This will not impact any in-progress player research)

Also:

• Fixed rare crashes caused by async saving requests
• Returned hit fx to mushrooms to make it clearer which ones deal damage
• Fixed a couple of typos
• Fixed a minor shader bugs on sights of both Sniper Rifles that was causing the sight of Basilisk to show a big red X while jumping with lowered crosshair
• Fixed enemies being able to see the player through a wall in a few obscure scenarios
• Submitted a potential fix to the audio stuttering problems present at the entrance to the Tower
• Re-established the priority settings for some audio cues
• Some general sound rebalancing
  

PATCH 0.4.3.55481

(2024.09.25)

Highlights

Crash fixes:

• In human language, we fixed some crashes. In programmerspeak:
  
  Added fixes for CheckIfShouldDelayDamage() crash. Added fixed for invalid Gameplay Event callbacks. Gameplay ability IsTickable() conditions are now divided to minimize crashes (investigation pending). Replaced debug #if guards in Spawn Manager with macro variants. Added functions for input and movement simulations for player and player controller. Added test assets to abuse spawning, destroying and dealing damage. Reparented Muscle companion abilities to GameplayAbility (was PerkAbility).

Also:

• Fixed a hole in terrain, killed floating rocks on the island
• Fixed a significant streaming hitch inside the Wailing Tower
• Fixed misaligned vfx on Hunger’s Mysterium I
• Removed buggy color randomization on Assassins
• Fixed the bugged Antimagic Rune particle effects
• Fixed existing Mushroom spawns on the island and doubled their number
• Striga’s Mysterium I no longer incorrectly adds fire-oriented Arcana to the pool
• Added lightning strike sounds when Ricochet’s Mysterium III triggers
• Tweaked the concurrency settings asset that affects all music tracks

PATCH 0.4.2.55456

(2024.09.23)

Highlights

Striga:

• Redesigned Mysteria 1 and 2
• M1: +100% damage buff to stunned Minor enemies, +25% to Major ones
• M2: +25% damage buff to the burning stake
• M2 shockwave’s damage boosted from 10 to 30 HP
• Fixed some minor Striga bugs

Also:

• Added new setting which controls visibility of the interaction prompt. If you prefer to play with no HUD, you will no longer see any ‘[E] Open’, ‘[E] Collect’ or similar prompts. (You can re-enable them in the settings if you want.)
• Fixed the crash when running game directly via .exe file
• The Collector should have his collision active now
• Ammo chests are no longer buried too deep in the sand
• Broken mirror, Elias, and Clover should once again work as intended
• Added particle effects to Wailing Tower doors after clearing the floor
• Fixed Tower first level finished stinger playing when leaving the tower on the surface
• Performance tweak do Cagefight event
• Added Echoes to the Island Vault
• Island of the Damned’s Scepter no longer shows on the map once it has been picked up
• Lightsource performance tweaks on the Island Vault
• Fixed some over-aggressive LOD transitions
• Monk’s note in the Island of the Damned Vault now doesn’t show up again if you already picked it up
• Added a custom “enemy pushed” sound to Ring of Obedience
• Added idle sounds to Baleworth’s healing essence
• Changed Eye of the Madwoman thunderstruck sound
• Ring of Thorns decay activation sound cue now properely triggers on the enemy
• Bittersweet Nightshade’s shockwave now has a custom sound cue

PATCH 0.4 .1.55385

(2024.09.23)

• Calamity should drop correct type of ammo as a reward now
• Fixed a bug where Four Leaf Clover was not working as advertised
• Cursed items now chip away 5 Focus charges when the player is cursed
• Elias now correctly updates the Calamity bar
• Stakes now properly affect multiple environmental elements
• Fixed sniper rifle sights for Centered crosshair
• Fixed the ability to switch to ADS from running
• Fixed Madness ticks in the Island Vault
• Fixed the Cornucopia exploit
• Multiple fixes to the Tower, for both gameplay and graphics
• Fixed the passive Monks
• Various tweaks to weapon sounds (mostly volume-related)

PATCH 0.4 – The High Stakes Update

First, the top level changes that arrived with the update are described here.

Second, below are the detailed but partial patch notes. Wait, “partial”? Yes. There have been over 1200 (one thousand two hundred) submits to our Helix (source control software) between The Wailing Tower update and now. Listing them all is an impossible task. We hope the partial listing is better than nothing, though, so here goes:

Gameplay

Equipment

• Monkhood:
  • M2: Increased extra layer chance from 33%- 66% to 50%/70%
  • M3: Increased the chance that shield will hold after receiving damage from 10% to 25%
• Ring of Excreta:
  • Lowered base damage from 30/40/50 to 20/25/30
• Ring of Thorns:
  • Increased dodge window from 0,3 to 0,4 sec
  • Increased Decay power from 100% to 150%
• Hailstorm:
  • Added 5 bullets to reserves
• Echo:
  • Increased the base effective range from 7m to 9m
  • Reduced reload time from 500ms to 400ms
• Psychopomp:
  • Reduced base effective range from 9m to 8m

Events

• Cursed Chest:
  • Cursed Chest now grant more gold and an additional treasure
  • You can now see what type of a curse is put on a Cursed Chest before you open them
  • Barriers protecting enemies in a Precise Cursed Chest event are now vulnerable to knock backs, stuns and freezes
  • Shooting an protected undead monster in the face still won’t kill it, but might buy you some space. With no way to control shielded enemies whatsoever, this event tended to be very chaotic and not fun
  • Increase the area of Hungry Cursed Chest safe zone by 30%
  • Tweaked the visuals so it’s more clear when you’re about to leave the circle
• Explosive Package:
  • Reduced the distance at which the severed head spawns by 30%
• Crystalised Witchfire pickups:
  • Added crystalised Witchfire pickups to Scarlet Coast and Island of the Damned
  • Lowered the amount of crystals in the Irongate Castle and randomised their locations (same for all the other regions).
  • Added rare big crystalised Witchfire pickups
• Cursed Items:
  • Made cursed items slightly more visible
  • Cursed items aura now activates from much further, making them easier to spot

AI / Weapons

Optimization

• AI hit animation selection logic performance improvements
• various minor optimizations to AI pathfinding especially in multilayered navigation cases
• optmized pathfinding update requests to better fit in our ai budgeting
• slight improvement to the Hermitorium load times

Bugfixes

• Fixed some enemies not playing hit animations when applying the damage to their legs
• Fixed a few rare crashes
• Fixed enemy animations when looking at the player from up close
• Fixed enemy hit animations on Swordsman skeleton family of enemies
• Fixed a bug that cause the game haning during Sister egg laying animations
• Fixed Prophet getting stuck on wooden elements in the boss room
• Adjusted melee hitboxes on Musketeer, Arquebusier, Husk, Husk Archer, Cultist and Cultist Archer animations to better reflect the moments when the hit happens
• Fixed walking into frozen enemies mid melee animation dealing damage
• Improved blends on FPP animations
• Fixed enemies getting stuck in walls
• Fixed enemies not teleporting back to navmesh if they ever make out of it

Changes

• Sniper Rifles:
  • Changed recoil behaviour on sniper rifles
  • Improved scopes clarity
  • Modified sniper rifles shooting animation
  • Modified Sniper Rifles snights
• Hand Cannons
  • Added clip rotation and hammer movement during shooting animations
• Buckler Swordsman
  • Shortened decay effect on the cloud his shieldbreak causes
  • Extended the decay effect on his projectile

UI

New features and changes related to them

• Added Mysteria Forge where you can upgrade your gear. It should make whole process better UX-wise
• Added new animations and sounds to make upgrading gear more fun
• Upgrade button now displays remaining incantations number, making it easier to decide on which items should they be spent
• Removed hitch which occurred after unveiling new mysterium and which was related to loading upgraded item assets. Thanks to that, all animations and effects should now be played smoothly, making gear upgrade more enjoyable
• Changed notifications and objectives to lead player to the Mysteria Forge instead of the Gunroom when there is gear to be upgraded
• Changed settings to support new dash and spell input modes on KBM. Notably, added a warning displayed when the player tries to use ‘Dash on Shift tap’ and ‘Sprint on toggle’ simultaneously (as these settings are incompatible with each other).
• Changed tutorial to react to dash and spell input modes set by player — it takes into account KBM settings, always displaying proper prompts

Bugfixes 

• Fixed the issue with weapons in Inspect Screen being displayed incorrectly when player was standing close to any wall
• Workshop: fixed issues with actions sometimes not being displayed in red when they’re unavailable
• Fixed the bug with empty Death Screen being displayed after dying in the Hermitorium
• Fixed bug which made weapons images be incorrectly scaled in a popup displayed when picking them up

Other changes

• Updated credits
• Added ‘Arcana’ subtitle to Prophecies’ powers descriptions, because it wasn’t perfectly clear that every Prophecy power consists of two parts: not only Omen, but also power controlling Arcana being rolled in a given row. Some players missed that information, and this change makes it more clear
• Changed minibosses’ (Drowned Captain and Fallen Liberator) health bars. They no longer use bosses’ health bars — instead, they now use typical health bars with red icons above them making them distinct from other enemies
• Tutorial now displays both keys bound to dash on KBM (V as well as MB4). Prior to this change, some players weren’t even aware of the second binding
• Removed invisible wall in the Gunroom, you can now get as close to the chest as you want

Audio

Modifications to elements that were already in the game

• Did some general sound rebalancing
• Redesigned the sounds for the famously problematic Ring of Excreta
• Redesigned part of the sounds of the Ring of Thorns (implementation pending)
• Lightly redesigned the sounds for the Shadowmist Ring
• Lightly redesigned the sounds for the Bittersweet Nightshade Fetish
• Redesigned the sound that plays when you pickup the healing essence generated by Balewort
• Lightly redesigned the sound for Mandrake
• Lightly redesigned the sound that plays when the player’s shield is regenerated
• Redesigned the sounds of the Severed Ear Relic
• Redesigned the sounds of the Eye of the Madwoman Relic
• Redesigned the materialization sound for Gnosis Chests
• Redesigned the idle sound for Cursed Items
• Tweaked Hunger’s freezing shot sound
• Fixed an issue in the timing of Whisper’s reload sounds
• Fixed an issue in the prioritization of Echo’s explosive pellets’ sounds

Additions to elements that was already there

• Made it so that the weapon equipping foley is audible after casting or attempting to cast a spell
• Added foley to the player’s dash
• Designed sounds that play when enemies’ souls spawn as players dodge an attack while being in full focus, as well as sounds that play when said souls burst
• Designed sounds that play when enemies are pushed by the perks of the Ring of Obedience (implementation pending)
• Designed an idle loop for the healing essence generated by Balewort (implementation pending)

Work on new features

• Designed sounds for Striga
• Designed sounds for the Madness Statues
• Designed a sound for the new UI elements tied to the Mysteria Forge station

PATCH 0.3.3.54289 ^2024.08.21

Gameplay:

• All heavy spells now despawn if cast again before their duration runs out
• Changed the order of Fetish research to make Fetishes more useful to beginners appear earlier
• Changed the description of Cleansing Fire from “Increased weapon damage against witchfire-boosted enemies” to “Increased weapon damage against Elite and Ascended enemies”
• Fixed missing reload speed bonus from Severed Ear relic
• Fixed Preyer Echoes dropping from Ron the Revenant
• Fixed a tiny audio bug that was taking place during Rotweaver’s reloading animation
• Fixed Axeman teleporting close to the player post missed axe throw
• Fixed issue where player could’ve gotten into the Madman’s Dream straight out of the box in the Tower
• Picking items while transitioning from the Madman’s Dream back to the Tower should not freeze the game on fade-in

Rotweaver:

• Reduced Mysterium II ammo regeneration from 20 bullets to 7
  • Rotweavers’ ammo regeneration was intended as a way to encourage longer bursts, a way to top off its ammo reserves. However, because it (intentionally) triggers on sources of Decay other than the Rotweaver, it was overperforming and basically given careful players infinite ammunition. This change should still give it incredible ammo economy when build around, but keep it at reasonable levels.

Ring of Obedience:

• Fixed a bug that sometimes prevented Ring of Obedience from pushing enemies around
• Changed Mysterium II from “Chance to drop extra items on push kills” to “Stamina regenerated on push kills”
• Increased Ring of Obedience push damage by 10
  • These changes are meant to encourage a more aggressive playstyle the Ring of Obedience excels at

Chain Lightning:

• Increase base range by 2m.

Stormball:

• Basic Stormball strikes now have only 25% chance to knock back enemies (Mysterium II powered up Stormball still knocks back with every strike)
• Decreased base and powered up lightning bolt strike range by 2m
• Decreased base and powered up Mysterium III explosion range by 1 meter
• Decreased base Mysterium III damage from 60 to 50, and powered up damage from 90 to 75

Burning Stake:

• Range shortened from 25/30/35m to 20/25/30 m
• Damage now partially drops off the further enemies are from the Stake

Traps:

• You now need to be able to see the Antimagic Rune to disarm it
• Freeze Crystals now receive full damage from any distance
• Freeze Crystals are now visibile on the radar when you get near them
• Lowered the amount of Freeze Crystals that can spawn at the same time

Events:

• Increased rewards for Rarog’s Egg event (although Rarog’s Egg is a pretty easy event, it’s relatively long – the rewards were increased to reflect that time investment)
• Bloodthirsty Cursed Chest no longer display fail message when you get damaged after you successfully finish the event

UI:

• Fixed too big of a margin after echo quest objective
• Added space after dash in echo quest objective for better appearance
• Potential fix for objectives not being evenly arranged in some circumstances

Graphics:

• Much better rocks collision on Island of the Damned for smooth movement and less invisible barriers
• Increased fidelity on some assets/areas of Island of the Damned
• Fixed some levitating rocks, seams, drawdistances, glitches etc. while slightly improving framerate
• Fixed performance drop around The Collector in the Hermitorium
• Fixed performance drop while using Hailstorm

EDIT: Plus this hotfix:

• Foul Stimulant no longer stacks
• Fixed a bug that prevented Witchfire Essence from spawning when using the Witchfire Orbs arcanum
• Added Red Warning color to the info that Gnosis level-up increases difficulty a bit

PATCH 0.3.2.54205 ^2024.08.16

Buffs:

Rotweaver

• Increased base damage (from 6 to 8)
• Increased Mysterium I Decay strength (from 70%-150% to 100%-170%)
• Slightly increased effective range (from 10m to 11m)

Basilisk

• Increased rate of fire by 30%
• Increased ADS zoom strength (from x2.5 to x3, this also increases its effective range when scoped in)

Fixes

• Better Prophecy filtering
  • This should eliminate a lot of errors that some people had
• Significantly increased the values for Fast Strafe arcana
• Last Elixir now works as intended
• Removed Earth element tags from Severed Ear
  • Means that no Decay arcana will be randomized to it
• Quote from Panda: “I fixed one more Arcana but forgot which one”
• Fixed the lost bolt while quickswapping the crossbow
  

Varia:

• Made Preyer Echoes gold, for distinction and visual consistency

PATCH 0.3.1.54190 ^2024.08.15

Highlight:

• Fixed Critical section prioritization when ADS
• Tweaked AA values for all guns

This one is pretty interesting. Initially, Witchfire featured a very generous, Destiny-like level of bullet magnetism, whether you were using a keyboard and mouse (KBM) or a controller. It worked well—you could still miss shots, but the game’s focus was more on combat strategy rather than pixel-perfect accuracy.

However, some time ago, we optimized the bullet magnetism code, inadvertently introducing a bug that made critical hits harder to land.

Let me explain what that means. Typically, when a bullet just barely misses the critical area on an enemy but doesn’t hit any other part of the enemy, the game makes an easy decision: it bends the bullet to turn it into a critical hit. But when the bullet hits the enemy’s body near the critical point, the game has to decide whether to count that as a critical hit (which is part of the purpose of bullet magnetism) or leave it as a body shot.

Originally, the game always opted for the critical hit. The bug I mentioned, however, caused the game to always choose the body shot instead.

Surprisingly, we introduced this bug… and nobody noticed. We all felt the game was a bit harder, but for various reasons—”Maybe it’s because I’m using a new weapon,” etc.—we didn’t really recognize the underlying issue.

After releasing TWT, a player named Bidby brought this to our attention on Discord:

Headshots feel a lot more difficult to land. Was ‘bullet bending’ removed or tweaked? I used to really enjoy Hunger, but now it feels very weak because I can’t seem to land anywhere near as many headshots as I used to. I wasn’t able to get a single 6-headshot streak tonight, whereas I used to get several per run before.

That comment finally prompted me to investigate the issue. I went back to using my trusty Hunger, and sure enough, something was off.

A few hours later, Kacpi fixed the problem. I went to the Castle to test it, and while the issue was resolved, I now felt that the aim assist was too generous. Apparently, playing with the harder aiming difficulty over the past few weeks made me appreciate that challenge more, and I found that I enjoyed it. So, while the aim assist was restored to its pre-bug state, it now felt too easy.

As a result, I decided to tweak the aim assist for all guns, setting it somewhere between the “bug” and the original bullet magnetism. The game is now easier than it was yesterday, but slightly more challenging than it was over the past year.

Oh, and by the way, the values change depending on the weapon’s Mysteria. Just one more reason to enhance those guns…

Gameplay

• Added the scepter to the map as Unknown Artifact, no more blind searching
• Warden now properly appears in random places rather than one
• Basilisk ammo count now properly raises at the right moment
• After-boss door inside the tower made inactive …for now
• Adjusted melee hitboxes on Madman attacks to better reflect the animations
• Fixed Musketeer target tracking bug
• Removed the placeholder The Collector used to trigger upon first meeting the preyer

Graphics

• Fixed Scarlet Coast boss dome shield fx corruption
• 0,2GB less textures in the heaviest Tower areas
• Fixed misc collisions and level holes
• Fixed Main Menu Preyer and some Hermitory areas occasionally missing light reflections
• Fixed Scarlet Coast boss’s dome shield vfx corruption
• Normal and Cursed crystal light no longer flickers at High gfx preset

PATCH 0.3 – The Wailing Tower Update

The detailed TWT patch notes are available in a special blog post here.

PATCH 0.2.6.51306 ^2024.05.09

Unless some insane gamebreaker is found, this is the last patch for the Ghost Galleon update. Some smaller known issues remain (like wrong Stun meters in weapon descriptions) but, in theory, nothing big or in the way of fun. The game remains in a pretty great state, and we have already started the work on the next fat juicy update.

• Iron Cross:
  • Fixed Iron Cross not pulling enemies properly
  • Fixed Iron Cross Hexed count not going up when affecting enemies
• Reduced Assassin’s flashbang range
• Mercenary’s IceTrap:
  • Reduced lifespan
  • Increased their projectile visibility
  • Fixed a case in which a trail particle would remain attached to the Mercenary’s hand
• Fixed a case in which warning pointers would not show up when the enemy is behind the player but has no direct line of sight to them
• Fixed a case in which animation canceling would count a reload as canceled even if it was performed (as in bullet got added to the mag)
• Fixed Hungry Cursed Chest objective description
• Added timer to Patient Cursed Chest objective
• Fixed elemental effects remaining post death on elite enemies
• Fixed boss types on Vault bosses and Fallen Liberator
  • This should fix the Book of Serpents exploit
• Fixed radar dot type on Necromancer
• Fixed fall damage protection on M3 Ring of Wings
• Fixed Ring of Wings fall damage
• Lowered the range in which the Musketeer pushes for melee
• Dimacher now properly resists getting frozen
• Fixed Irongate Vault objective descriptions
• Fixed damage on some instances for M3 Echo
• Axeman:
  • Fixed Axeman post axe throw attack not triggering if he was not stunned and knocked back before the throw
  • Safeguard for the Axeman remaining invisible
• AI are no longer able to move behind certain walls in the Castle
• The red ghost feet trail will no longer lead players to treasure they’ve already picked up
• Fixed Gunners bubble ability not blocking projectiles
• Fixes to penetration logic:
  • Made sure that if a penetrating hit encounters a blocking section at its end it will register damage to a non-blocking section before it such exists (specifically this fixes shooting at shielded frozen enemies from the back)
  • Added logic allowing penetrating hits to go through blocking sections of multiple different actors if need be (shooting through two shields of two different enemies now works)
  • Added penetration logic to the Gunner’s shield bubble ability
• Fixed Hailstorm sniper rifle being invisible if it’s a first equipped weapon at the start of the game
• Fixed a bug which was corrupting menu tabs after closing menu with inspection screen opened
• Fixed a bug which in some rare cases blocked all actions in the menu, making bottom bar empty and unusable
• Fixed a bug which made Preyer model in the menu disappear in some cases
• All mirages should now properly display witchfire requirements

Audio

• Tweaked the routing settings of some sound cues to improve the perception of incoming enemy attacks when they happen outside of the player’s field of view
• Fixed a problem that could cause loops of enemies to remain audible after their owner had died
• Added another safeguard for Galleon Idle sfx loop
• Designed new sounds for all the interactions with Cursed Chests

PATCH 0.2.5.51242 ^2024.05.01

• Fixed misaligned crosshair bug introduced with the fix to FOV scaling in ultrawide screens
• Fixed FOV scaling (the last patch introduced a change that had inflated your FOV just a little bit if you played on any aspect ratio bigger than… 4:3 — it should go back to normal now 🙂 )

• Reduced stamina damage range for Assassin’s flashbang grenade
• Limited HP cost for falling from extreme heights (75 HP max)
• Clearer description of Galleon Calamity objectives
• Fixed some typos in objectives
• Updated sound and particle effects for the Mystic Alphabet trap
• Fixed missing poison flowers spawns in the Scarlet Coast Vault
• Enemy blacklist fixes
  • Meaning some enemies can only appear in select areas now. This is to make the maps have their own “ecosystem”. For example, the Woodsmen will never appear inside the Castle
• Knight IK fix
• Adjustments to how damage affects the Calamity bar
• Fixed Warden body staying after death
• Fixed ghosts not being able to fly through walls
• Sister
  • Increased melee animation speed
  • Increased spit animation speed
  • Increased spit projectile collision size
  • Increased spit projectile damage
  • Decreased spit attack swipe angle size
  • Tweaked behavior selection logic
• Devotee
  • Increased melee animation speed
  • Increased spit animation speed
  • Increased spit projectile collision size
  • Increased spit projectile damage
• Stigma Diabolicum on Mysterium 0 now has 1.2 dmg multiplier (reducing the effect of it being weaker than normal headshot)
• Potential fix to Axeman remaining invisible after throwing the axe

PATCH 0.2.4.51213 ^2024.04.30

Highlights

• Better AI
  • Fixed a building up delay of AI action selection that was caused by a large amount of AI units in a scene. This should result in much more responsive behavior selection
    • This affects …everything, so please let us know if you see any issues

• Performance boosts
  • Various optimizations we performed resulted with around 25% CPU performance boost on average in our tests. This should be perceivable when the performance was CPU bound in the first place, like with weaker hardware, or while playing on lower settings.
  • We managed to tackle a few sources of heavy hitching related to high intensity damage situations (looking at Iron Cross + Blight Cyst combo) — there should be a significant improvement here, but there is still some work to be done!
  • Overall AI behavior
  • Spawn preparation while roaming the map

• Added mouse smoothing option to KBM controls (Off by default)
  • Members of the PCMR cult, rejoice!
    
• Limited Husk and Cultist Archers range to 40m ^{community feedback}
  • No more WTF hits from enemies on the other side of the map
    
• No more level-up notifications for max level players.
  • From Cartman to Lukas, with love.

Gear

• Hypnosis
  • Killing an enemy with fully charged Mysterium III Hypnosis now correctly triggers lightnings
  • Hypnosis no longer has blocked charging after cancelling reload animation
• Crown of Fire
  • Mysteria II and III mechanics won’t trigger before unlocking
  • Fixed Mysterium III duration scaling
• Stigma Diabolicum
  • Fixed a bug that made the cyst smaller on Mysterium I and II
  • Mysterium III now also triggers on Decay damage/ticks
  • Now deals more decay damage over shorter period
  • Fixed an incorrect Mysterium III decription. Now it says “Killing an enemy with decay or a shot at the cyst fully regenerates the spell.” This has always been Stigma Diabolicum’s third Mysterium ability (besides the Decay part)
• Lightning Bolt
  • Mysterium III now correctly stuns the first target hit
• Hunger
  • Fixed Mysterium III multi-target freezing caused by a weapon swap.
  • Adjusted charged bullets glow for ammo regenerating abilities and effects.
• Shadowmist Ring
  • Adjusted the activation angle: now you have to dash more in the direction of the enemy to proc the ring effect

Gameplay/UX

• Fix to FOV scaling in ultrawide screens
• Fixed an oversight caused Incantation II to be a much rarer Irongate Castle drop than intended
• Calamity Timer around Mini-Map is back ^{community request}
• Ascension notifications were triggering with old unlocks data, this has been fixed
  • New potion slots are granted on level 15, 25, 45, and 70 now
• Patrolling enemies now have proper drops, this should speed up leveling a bit as well
• Added another hidden chest to the Irongate Castle, unveiled when players are at Gnosis II or higher
• Optimized method of refreshing map icons. This should improve your performance during gameplay and also reduce hitches experienced by some players when opening the map
• Nerfed the compositions and enemy counts of roaming enemies at the Castle
• Calamity vortex now has a bigger “crown”, should be easier to spot from across the map
• Empty room in the Gnosis Room no longer consumes witchfire. All other Mirage costs have been lowered. This is aimed to limit their influence on ascensions, especially in the early game
• We’ve nerfed certain Calamity triggers to make less of a influence on the Calamity bar. Calamity bar takes longer to fill now. Additionally, some of the triggers got cooldown periods. This was to address the issue of penalizing players for mashing the potion key several times in quick succession
• Range of camera shake from galleon cannonade was lowered to make it less of a nuisance
• Ascension requirements have been smoothed out to provide a better level up experience
• Ascension cost is now normalized and no longer relative to player’s class starting level
• Removed duplicated King’s Bell item which was not useable by the player
• Fixed a bug that was causing Swordsman to remain invisible if they got damaged sufficiently just before teleporting
• Arcana updates
  • Deadeye arcana now correctly boosts critical damage
  • Immunity Swap arcana now correctly triggers immunity and has added shield effect
  • Stormbringer arcana now works as described
  • Cascade arcana now works as described
  • Fixed Ice Statue’s infinite duration on minor enemies
  • Fixed Witchfire Orbs arcana witchfire dropping and scaling
  • Fixed Piercing Bullet arcana, now works correctly with Shieldbearer’s shield
  • Stun Bullets arcana fixed to only work for physical damage. Added percentage value to the description
• Memento Mori event
  • Lost souls now properely dissolve after you bring them required items
  • Fixed a bug that sometimes prevented them from granting rewards
  • Increased chances of receiving Incantations as event rewards
• Simultaneous Weapon swap + Fire inputs will no longer make the weapon disappear and disable all interactions
• Spell casting action followed by a very quick Fire/Reload will no longer play spell fail animation and will proceed to firing/reloading instead
• Fire/Reload input pressed at the end of the spell fail animation will no longer result in invisible weapon
• Fixed a navigation bug that was allowing Patrol enemies to step into Vaults when the door were closed
• Musketeer group shooting fixes (this should also stop them from running outside of some events)
• Weapon mesh is no longer visible under player’s feet when performing weapon swap or casting abilities
• Increased vendor price of Witchfire Cluster to 3 gold pieces (previous price didn’t take bonuses from Gnosis into consideration, which could lead to infinite witchfire exploit)
• Poisonous Flowers now only spawn of arenas with Manifestations (In the future they will spawn around other combat scenarios, but additional work needs to be done to ensure that they don’t prevent players from completing those scenarios and flowers properly wilt when the scenario is done)
• Provoking a Devotee attack by breaking too many eggs now increases your calamity bar (as much as triggering any other trap would)
• Fixed ragdoll deaths on Decay and Electro explosions for all enemies
• Optimized logic updating the weather state
• Restricted Woodsman and Larva movement so that they don’t leave their designated areas
• Fixed Crouch mode switch settings implementation.
• Fixed Drowned Captain ice mesh using Musketeer ice mesh
• Fixed a bug that caused Drowned Captain to remain invisible and invincible if his teleport got interrupted early on
• New weapons now show correct values on their Inspect screen
• Fixed a bug that caused both Faithful to take no Decay or Ice damage
• Fixed some improperly set up in place turning animations
• Fixed Sister Headshot particle rotation
• Adjusted Sister and Devotee shooting conditions
• Changed Devotee shooting pattern and damage
• Fixed improper Revenant Rotation Rate
• Lowered Grenadier Artillery’s attack occurrence frequency
• Fixed a black screen bug which occurred when player pressed Tab immediately after clicking ‘Start expedition’
• Added a feature allowing flying enemies to teleport back to navigable area if they ever seem stuck
• Added better logic selection for Sister and Devotee movement targets to prevent them from flying off of navigable area
• Fixed a bug that sometimes prevented alarms bells from spawning during the Ambush event
• Fixed a bug that would keep displaying Event Failed messages each time you get damaged after failing one of the Cursed Chest events
• Fixed issues with some events not updating their map icons after player completed them.
• Crystal that attracts proximity mines now properly grants treasure when destroyed
  Incantation II now displays proper pickup prompt
• Fixed a bug that caused one Mirror Lock event on Scarlet Coast to spawn below the ground
• Adjusted some particularly hard to find Mirror Lock battery locations
• Lowered the chance that three Gatekeepers will spawn at the same time
• Fixed a bug which caused Gatekeeper objectives to stay on the screen in some cases
• Elemental effects on enemies should correctly refresh after Fire+Freeze synergy.
• Optimized Gnosis chamber slightly on low quality settings – this is not a big change, but we’re looking at more reasons on why the framerate there can suffer
• Altered Devotee spitting pattern to make it actually dodgeable
• Lowered requirements for Mysteria unlocks on new spells to take into consideration their single target nature or increased cooldowns
• Fixed missing objective completion when required progress was patched below the current objective progress.
• Improved shadow quality on enemies and gameplay items at LOW quality preset

Sounds

• Added sounds to the Buried Treasure scenario
• Psychopomp’s damage boost SFX now correctly triggers only after shooting
• Fixed a bug reported by one of the players, that was causing a wind to fade out too abruptly around the Quarry in the Village
• Designed new sounds for the Mystic Alphabet trap
• Tweaked the attenuation curve of the Warden’s idle VO
• Tweaked the attenuation curve of the Proximity Mine’s idle VO ^{requested by the community}
• Fixed a bug that could cause the Galleon’s foley sounds to remain audible after defeating the Calamity ^{reported by the community}
• Added idle sounds to the Sister and Devotee to make their presence in the battlefield easier to detect ^{requested by the community}
• Tweaked the attenuation settings of the Swordsman’s teleport sound cues

PATCH 0.2.3.50947 ^2024.04.15

• Crown of Fire:
  • Now properly ignites enemies 🔥
  • Activation window reduced from 1/1.2/1.5 sec to 1/1.1/1.2 sec
  • M2 now triggers when you ignite a non-burning enemy
    
    
• Ring of Wings:
  • Reduced Stamina cost from M2 now only works for the first dash
  • Airborne dashes no longer possible when exhausted
    • The above tweaks change nothing for the intended use, simply blocks the ability to fly around the map like a witch on a broom
      
      
• Ring of Obedience:
  • Does not work on bosses anymore
    • We not not like making exceptions for items but this makes sense from the lore reasons, too: the bosses are basically too big and heavy to be smacked around with a magic leash like a puny ghoul
      
      
• Hypnosis bolt action rifle
  • Decreased the time window for the Perfect Shot
    • The gun is incredibly strong and its user needs to prove they’re worthy of all that power. With great power comes, uhm, great skill requirement
      

• Ice Stiletto M3 now correctly resets its cooldown when nothing was hit
• Tribute event now has proper collisions
• Added missing rewards for some Mirror Lock events
• Fixed missing or broken bonus reload speed limits on some weapons
• Dimacher now has correct Freeze resistance
• An anti-death fix to dropping to the first Familiar

PATCH 0.2.2.50919 ^2024.04.12

Highlights

• Added poisonous flowers to Scarlet Coast Witch Vault boss arena
  • Discourages players from running straight to the boss
  • Makes the Vault puzzle more interesting

• Progression changes I
  • Gnosis 1 multiplier on Scarlet Coast raised from 1.1 to 1.15
  • Gnosis 2 multiplier on Scarlet Coast from 1.25 to 1.35
  • Gnosis 3 multiplier on Scarlet Coast from 1.5 to 1.55
  • Gnosis 2 multiplier on Irongate Castle raised from 1.4 to 1.5
  • This should make leveling around level 15 feel a lot better

• Progression changes II
  • Significantly lowered costs of ascension on levels 1 to 5
    • Penitent class is still the hardest, considering stat penalties or scarce initial gear but now a bit faster to bring up to speed in relation to other classes

• Progression changes III
  • Changed the level up costs around level 15 to make the difference in cost more pronounced (instead of jumping from 18K to 20K, it jumps from 16K to 25K)

• Progression changes IV
  • Added a slight boost to research for each set of patrol enemies

• Changes and fixes for Cornucopia spell and Psychopomp shotgun
  • Cornucopia now refills ammo from reserves instead of regenerating it
  • Psychopomp now grants +10% damage per hit instead of +20%
    • These are fairly mild nerfs so we will see if this is enough. We still want this combo to be useful and exciting, just not broken
  • Cornucopia’s duration now extends when cast again while active

Other fixes, updates and tweaks

• Fixed one case that could glitch the spawn system
• You can now pick up more King’s Bells and Ornate Keys
• Projectiles no longer collide with some event mirages
• Fixed infinite witchfire glitch w/ Ring of Obedience on the tutorial enemy
• Major enemies now properly resist Freeze, shortening its duration
• Fixes to flying enemy pathing
• Fix to Warden seeking behavior
• Added foley sounds to the no-hit melee attacks 💪
• Changed objectives colors in Gnosis Screen for better clarity
• Better display of bonus witchfire in Deus Vult notification ^{community request}
• Class Selection Screen now displays starting level of each class
• Improved display of research requirements in Workshop Screen
• A mix pass on weapon shooting sounds
• Mysteria objectives now correctly progress only for equipped items
• You can no longer disable the mirage in the Scarlet Coast Witch Vault before killing the Vault Guardian
• Scarlet Coast Witch Vault should now complete properly
• Scarlet Coast Witch Vault Guardian got it proper boss buff
• Explosive Delivery: walking is now less aggravating to the Head
• Enemies no longer keep spawning after you finish the Explosive Delivery
• Flamekeeper event now drops non-cursed items
• Mandrake no longer prevents death from falling out of world bounds
• Calamity Catalyst will no longer appear in the Castle’s boss room
• Calamity objective UI should now disappear without spoiling anything if you kill too many enemies
• Closed portal should bo longer appear on the mini-map during Calamities
• Cleanup of various adventure log entries. Messages in the bottom left side of the screen should not duplicate as often now
• Enemies are no longer able to get on the barrier blocking the passage to boss arena in the Scarlet Coast
• Smaller/cosmetic tweaks and fixes

PATCH 0.2.1.50866

• Locked chests now get added to the map properly after looking at them
• Patrolling enemies now grant witchfire on death
• Mirror Lock event now works properly
• Added High quality water reflections to final Scarlet Coast Vault arena
• Fixed Hermitory severe visual issues when loading from slow disks
• Enemies no longer able to shoot through walls from inside (or outside) of barracks room in Irongate Castle
• Fixed several visual glitches and ability to walk outside of game space in Castle vault
• Fixed ability to walk outside of game space through ceiling of Gnosis Room
• fixed Vault logic affecting all Necromancers on Castle and all Sisters and Devotees in Village past Vault activation
• Fixed Music not being changed post calamity
• Falling Star’s homing projectiles bonus damage now ramps up slower. It’s stun damage has been drastically lowered.
• Gold cost of starting new research now properely ramps up over the first few projects, starting at 0 for most of them
• Some event starting objects were not emmiting subtle witchfire particles as they are supposed to, making them harder to spot in the game – this has been fixed.
• Fixed incorrect formatting of the Breadcrumbs event timer
• Gnosis Chest mirage is no longer teeny-weeny
• Fixed issue with some players not having ‘New game’ nor ‘Continue’ option in Main Menu. If your savefile is corrupted, main menu will now display an option to open ‘Profiles’ window (so you are able to manage your savefiles). Corrupted savefiles are now displayed in the ‘Profiles’ window. Note: if any of your save files happen to be corrupted, please report it on the #wf-bug-reports channel and send us the whole folder with your saves before deleting the faulty ones.
• Tweaked the sounds for the Charged Melee and Charged Melee on Stunned Enemies abilities, made them slightly quieter on the mix and made them duck other mix elements.
• Fix for Wf balance in run summary when safe deposit arcana is active
• Fixed the Sound Class settings on a few ambient sounds that were playing outside of the systems, remaining audible regardless of the game’s sound settings.
• Fixed Mirage in Castle Vault entrance not playing sounds
• Fixed player insta death on melee use if snapping found a collision in between player and melee target
• Fixed Liberator perma staying in frozen state when dying while frozen
• Fixed Bosses and minibosses not playing crit death sounds on death in some circumstances
• Lowered Hypnosis zoom-in effect
• Stigma diabolicum now gives the right amount of charges when combined with Extra Charge arcana
• Fixed penetration settings on Shieldbearer shield
• Fixed lore in ice stiletto
• Fixed ability descriptions in Burning stake
• Smaller tweaks and bugfixes

HOTFIX 0.2.0.50804

Gameplay

• Workaround for the “hitbox too small” issues affecting some objects like portals, Gnosis Book or mirage incantations.

PATCH 0.2 – Ghost Galleon Update

The detailed GGU patch notes are available in a special blog post here.

PATCH 0.1.10.48090

Important announcement! First, unless a severe issue is found, this is the final patch until the GGU (our first big update). The game is in good shape, so we can now focus exclusively on creating the new content and gameplay for the GGU. Second, we have announced that the GGU will be out second half of November/beginning of December but we’re no longer so sure (which, for the 100th time, is the lesson one should never announce a date until 100% certain). Reason? We have basically increased the scope of the update to make sure it’s both:

• A great jumping point for new players
• A worthy reason for returning players to spend some quality time in the game playing something they have not played before

This means not just new content, but new gameplay and other surprises, including some changes to the core systems. To make sure we deliver, we’re not aiming for a date, we’re aiming for the GGU to be complete as according to the plan. If this means we’ll slip, then we think it’s worth it, and we hope you’ll agree when the GGU is out. We will be updating the status on Discord, Twitter and Facebook, and we plan on blogging more in the coming weeks.

Highlights

• Updated used Unreal Engine version from 4.27.1 to 4.27.2. This should hopefully fix some rare crashes
• Tweaked the warning sounds that play when there’s an incoming attack from an out-of-sight source community feedback
• Significant texture optimizations in some Castle areas community feedback
• Game-wide texture pool optimizations

Gameplay

• Pressing the Sprint key will longer interrupt auto-fire weapons when standing
  • This might have been the reason for “Midas sometimes stops firing” kind of bugs
• Pressing Dash input while airborne won’t trigger dash-related events
  • This prevents unwanted behavior of Arcana, such as Reload Dash, which could be abused by repeatedly pressing dash in the air
• Fixed double-jump while crouching or sliding
• Pressing Jump key for the first time when already in the air/falling will now correctly trigger double jump instead of the normal jump
• Added a visual effect to spell icons to indicate that the spell is ready to be cast community feedback
• Added a visual effect to spell icons to indicate that spells are disabled community feedback
• The names of new Arcana are now displayed when you claim them in the Workshop community feedback
• Fixed incorrect Cricket’s First Mysterium description. It now reads: “Killing enemies generates extra Witchfire Essence”
• Added a new layers to Cricket’s auto-reload sound
• Fixed the bug that caused the Eye of the Madwoman’s thunderstrike to be inaudible. Now for realsies
• Fixed a bug that was causing Cursed Chests to spawn in the same place. This time for good. Or so we hope
• Gates event in the Castle now changes the color on completion
• Echo’s damage boost will no longer stay charged indefinitely after sliding
• Improved the logic to show Souls Sigils, it’s now easier to materialize them
• Added new sounds to the torches and extended their audible range
• Extraction portal should disappear from the map correctly after collapsing
• Sentinel icon will change the color to red when Master Sentinel gets killed
• Fixed a pathfinding issue that caused the ghosts to get stuck
• Cooldown reset prompt in the tutorial now also melee

Tech/gfx community feedback

• Merged functionality of two ‘reset’ buttons in controls settings to avoid confusion. Now you reset both settings and bindings using the same button.
• Fixed small tree branches and leaves blocking bullets
• Minor zone traversal performance optimization
• Flying Effigies of Plague healing particle effects no longer stack on top of each other
• Fixed a bug that could result in Effigies of Scabs spawning outside the bounds of the level during the Duel Events
• optimized Soul Sigils performance
• Improved 16:10 support in Weapon Inspect Screen
• Fixed a bug which in some cases made it possible to shoot while being in the Map Selection Screen in the Hermitorium
• Slightly better visuals at two Castle spawn points
• Fixed more holes and streaming issues in Castle
• Miscellaneous visual polish
• Fixed a couple of places where player could get stuck unable to move
• Added potential fix to bugged Midas’ magic sight’s material
• Midas heat bar won’t show anymore on top of main menu when the game is loaded
• Fixed a bug that caused enemies to get into locked areas in the Castle
• Fixed a faulty collider that would stop Vulture bolts from passing over Cursed Chests

PATCH 0.1.9.47935

A week’s worth of updates in one patch.

Highlights:

• Added ADS modifier setting for both mouse and controller community request
• Potential fix for enemy spawns that stop functioning for the duration of the run community feedback
• Hunger’s charged bullets and Freezing Bullet will no longer disappear when reload is canceled community request
  • Also tweaked the visuals: color of the bullets won’t go from blue to orange (charged -> normal) right after the reload has started
• Lightning Bolt’s range has been increased slightly community request

Gameplay:

• New sounds for the exploding barrels
• Fixed incorrect or missing reload interrupts in following scenarios: community feedback
  • Jump after already performing two jumps – won’t interrupt
  • Jump after walking off the edge and falling – will now interrupt
  • Dash while airborne – won’t interrupt
  • Sprint without actually starting to sprint – won’t interrupt
  • Healing with no elixirs available – won’t interrupt
• Pressing Healing key won’t interrupt sprinting when player has no elixirs in the inventory
• Pressing Fire while airborne with running velocity will prevent the player from continuing the sprint after landing (unless Sprint key is pressed again before landing)
• Held inputs now reset when pausing the game (i.e. via opening the menu). This prevents them from being pressed indefinitely after unpausing
• Running speed while Exhausted is no longer slower than normal walking speed
• Snare updates:
  • Snare minions (eyeballs) no longer stack on top of each other
  • Vulture bolts no longer pass through Snare minions
  • Enemy projectiles can now destroy Snare minions
• Added a particle effect to a disappearing Fire Orb (Arcana effect)
• Fixed some Gatekeeper power sources geometry clipping
• Fixed an issue that could spawn unreachable enemies during Rituals on Irongate Castle community feedback
• Teleport audio mix now triggers way closer to teleport
• No more progress research while killing the Hermitorium Revenant
• Treasures shouldn’t spawn anymore outside of the player space in Castle’s boss arena
• Fixed access to treasure spawn behind statue in Castle hallway
• Pausing the game will no longer “lose” some of the input logic
  • This potentialy fixes a lot of issues with targeting, casting, interruptions and other player-weapon interactions.
• Applied a possible fix to the bug that caused Swordsman’s telegraph sound to be inaudible
• Applied a possible fix to the bug that caused the Eye of the Madwoman’s thunderstrike’s sound to be inaudible
• There are now always exactly two cursed chests on each expedition
  • This was always the intention – due to a bug, sometimes there were less or more cursed chests present
• Fixed a cooldown bug for spells with charges (might help with some of the reported issues with casting being blocked)
• Switching weapons back and forth in Gunroom no longer blocks reloading, ammo usage and ADS stamina draining
• Fixed issue with Interact input still being pressed after closing the menu

Tech:

• Hermitorium stairs collision fix – no more interrupted sliding community feedback
• Hermitorium vista cosmetic fixes
• Fixed a bug that added to the stutter during traversal between zones
• Significantly reduced rendering cost of poisonous plant fields
• Fixed two instances of falling out of level while inside Castle
• Fixed camera clipping through some level geometry in Castle
• GPU optimizations in a few Castle arenas
• Cosmetic fixes in Scarlet Coast villages
• Fixed streaming bug causing parts of level to disappear when hugging some hallway walls inside Castle
• Disappearing calamity portal shouldn’t leave active portal sound behind

PATCH 0.1.8.47828

Last ping this week unless someone finds a game breaker in this patch (let’s hope not). Half of the team went to GIC (Game Industry Conference, https://gic.gd/) so we shouldn’t be risking anything else for the weekend. The main reason for the patch is to fix the enemy spawns.

Gameplay:

• Fixed the cursed chest breaking the spawn system
  • Added a potential fix to the spawn system breaking all together
  • Now a faulty scenario spawn can — but doesn’t have to — affect only that given scenario but not the whole run. Please report if any of these two things happen to you!
• Pathfinding bug fix – enemies should now more consistently push their target as well as reach their destinations
• FIxed melee attaching to enemies – no more flying around. For now.
• Tweaks to Swordsman jump attack and teleport logic to allow them to get into more locations
• Minor pathfinding optimization
• Added a failsafe that should prevent two Cursed Chests from spawning in the same location

Tech:

• Fixed v-sync being unavailable when only DLSS SR is on but not FG. Now only FG disables v-sync ^{community request}
• Cosmetic and collision fixes on Scarlet Coast
• Tower ruins on Scarlet Coast now have precise collision for easier climbing
• Added option to switch Run action between Hold and Toggle ^{community request}

PATCH 0.1.7.47804

Lots of nice things in this one. See the highlights. Also, a few buffs to the player. We want a hard game but a fair game. A few nice QoL updates up in this patch too.

Highlights:

• Cloud saves ^{community request}
• Added an option to disable low health and stamina exhaustion effects ^{community request}

Gameplay:

• Traps (including the Warden) are now added to the game at higher player level ^{community feedback}
  • Game ramped up in difficulty too fast at the lower levels. This should let new players get a better grip on the core combat before the witch starts throwing new obstacles at them
• Player HP during the Assassin Calamity capped higher, at 21. You will survive small damage once, now.
• Fixes and tweaks to research progression
  • Fixed errors where player was being granted random amounts of research while simply walking across level. This fix slowed perceived research speed significantly so we boosted the amounts granted elsewhere to compensate for the change:
  • Following ghosts and killing bosses also gives research points now
  • Killing enemies now grants small amount of research up to 7 points of research. This is mostly to help some players with early item unlocks during the starting hours of the game to compensate for situations when you have problems with area clears
  • We’ll keep an eye on how it all turned out, so please report your overall feelings after those changes
  • Lowered the Research Time of the first Heavy Spell from 25 to 15
• Removed Mine spawnpoints in Sunken District that could trigger on player spawn
• Enemy footsteps now more clearly audible in short ranges and the midst of battle
• Headshot now sound always audible always, even when you snipe at long distances
• Extended duration of the post death camera effect and tweaked logic to better showcase the enemy behind the final blow
• Lowered the tick rate of the Grenadier AoE effect to decrease its stamina penalty
  • Tick now occurs every 0.5s instead of 0.25s
  • Damage dealth per tick increased from 2 to 4
• Added Volatile Witchfire reward to Soultrap event (the bigger the better you do during the event)
  • So those of you who do it before unlocking Demonic Weapons don’t feel like you wasted your time ^{community suggestion}
• Spells with charges should now work properly on any charge and do not block casting
• Spell cooldown UI was adjusted to better display charge status and whether the spell is available or not
• Fixed a bug with incorrect notification text being displayed after trying to upgrade stat at the max level
• Unveiled Arcana now display feather icon and short explanation that it’s possible to unveil them using White Raven Feathers
  • Watching you play made us realize that it wasn’t clear that you can unveil third Arcanum in a row simply by using White Raven Feathers. Now it should be more clear
• Interaction prompt will now always appear regardless of your HUD visibility settings
  • It was possible to accidentally hide interaction prompts completely. It looked like a bug, especially when using “minimal HUD” preset, and could be confusing to some players
• Added small version indicator in the top-right corner of the screen
• Calamity Projectiles now resemble sentinel skulls and no longer deal damage, they only strike sanity of the preyer
  • This should hugely help with dispatching Catalyst vortexes while having two close range weapons

Tech:

• It’s now possible to bind mousewheel in your KBM controls scheme
• Few more ‘stuck in geometry’ fixes for Coast and Castle levels
• Lots of enemies and traps got optimized when viewed at distance
• Added Discord and Patch Notes links to the main menu
  • We want to be in touch with as many players as possible and this change should make it easier to find us. We also want to be transparent how the game evolves, and thus made the patch notes to be more accessible

PATCH 0.1.6.47760

This week we are focusing 99% on optimizations, QoL updates and bug fixing. There might be one new feature soon but if we manage to squeeze that in, it’ll mostly concern new players. In other news, next week we’re starting the work on a big update planned for the second half of November. We will also reveal the road map. Finally, expect a cool blog post tomorrow!

Gameplay:

• Adjusted Mines explosion ranges
• You can now run away from the Sanity-draining Cursed Chest ritual to avoid further Sanity drain
• Removed Mine spawnpoints that ended up in a rock
• Removed occasional wrong visual effects near interaction objects
• Fixed an indestructible Gatekeeper Switch on the Scarlet Coast
• Fixed a Cursed Chest Barrier Scenario bug that caused a black aura to linger on enemies after their protective aura was removed
• Removed collisions with a destroyed Cursed Chest
• Players can no longer claim rewards off failed Cursed Chest rituals
• Added a few stream sounds that were missing in the Castle’s Garden
• Easier to climb the tower ruins on Scarlet Coast ^{community pain relief initiative}
• Did a minor tweak to the way being in proximity to a portal affects the ambient sounds
• Fixed Stamina Bar overflow bug
• Fixed crouch related dash bugs
• Temporarily removed Larvas from Cursed Chest Barrier Ritual enemy pool, in lieu of other enemy compositions
  • Larvas were encountering numerous serious problems in this event (like being invisible), we’ve temporarily put them on the bench until we sort those problems out
• Tweaked the behaviour of the first boss’s dome to better represent the intended design
  • The dome now scales down to better represent that the player is supposed to stay inside
  • Changed the damage interval while outside to 1s up from 0.67s, and fixed the time of the 1st application
  • Shortened the duration of the dome from 90s to 31s

Tech:

• Reduced CPU and GPU cost of all chests and some other spawnable gameplay items
• Added an icon for unknown keyboard input
  • Some of you use more exotic input devices, like AZERTY keyboards. Currently we can’t make custom icons for all possible inputs, but we added a generic “unknown input” icon. This way you know that the game recognized you input but simply can’t show a correct icon
• Added quick weapon swap binding to keyboard (default: Z) ^{community request}
• Added subtab swapping bindings to rebinding menu
• Fixed issues with binding keyboard’s U key
• Miscellaneous collision fixes, light visual polish and more level optimizations ^{community feedback}

2023.09.30 – PATCH 0.1.5.47713

We’ve done an extensive pass over all the Light Spells, fixing, tweaking, and balancing them. Some even got new powers…

Highlights

• Blight Cyst:
  • Fixed the growth animation, explosion range and damage
  • Removed friendly fire and proximity detonation
  • Replaced the Second and Third Mysterium powers with new ones
• Fireballs:
  • Fixed projectile target acquisition and homing
  • Changed base charges to one, increased to two with the Second Mysterium
• Shockwave:
  • Fixed Shockwave’s recharge on Third Mysterium
• Lightning Bolt:
  • Affected targets now scale with each Mysterium
  • The spell now correctly stuns the first target with the Third Mysterium
• Frost Cone:
  • New Frost Cone’s Second Mysterium bonus
  • Third Mysterium now properly refreshes the charge. Changed required targets from 3 to 5.

• Wretch, Musketeer and Assassin hit particle effects from projectiles disabled if they hit the player ^{community feedback}
  • The fights are now even more dynamic with your vision clearer
• Double and Triple mushrooms are now much rarer, but restore much more health
  • Finding a rare mushroom should be a reason to celebrate

Gameplay

• Fixed missing Mysteria objective descriptions for some weapons
• Tweaked the sounds that play during the Bell Ambush, making them audible at longer distances
• Added new sounds that play when opening Ammo and Supply Chests
• Improved Wisp navigation capabilities
  • This will hopefully eliminate instances in which it got stuck and the event couldn’t proceed
• Added a second completion condition to Wisp
  • Even if for some reason it can’t move, it will run out of power after summoning enough enemies
• Fixed some Angelica spawns that clipped with geometry
• Fixed multiple unreachable Cursed Treasure spawns in Irongate Castle

Tech

• Fix for dematerialized enemy bodies stopping bullets and projectiles
• Insanity post process eye adaptation fix
• Fixed some Scarlet Coast bushes blocking bullets
• Removed an invisible wall blocking the entry to the wooden pier
• Witchlock switch minor optimization
• Fixed animation blends from equip to sprint on Hailstorm and All Seeing Eye

HOTFIX 0.1.4.47685

We’re getting reports that the Castle has some performance issues on some setups. We have found one culprit, and even though this does not fully solve the problem — which is a puzzle in itself, as during the development the level ran very well — we’ve decided to publish it right now before the next bigger patch. We will continue investigating but you should feel a difference nonetheless.

Just to make life more fun, we’re also releasing experimental redesign of Balewort. Hopefully we didn’t make it op. With much larger pool of player data, it was obvious that Balewort was under-performing by a huge margin, compared to other Fetishes. Those changes should make it a viable choice.

Highlights

• Major optimization to navigation requests performed close to multi-layered navigation planes
  • Translated to human language, enemies will calculate their paths to you much faster than before
• Balewort’s rebalance:
  • Healing Essence now drops when you are below 75% health, instead of 50%
  • Increased Healing Essence drop chance from 10/12/14% to 30/35/40%

Gameplay

• Fixed a bug that allowed multiple chests to spawn in the same location and prevented a more even spread throughout the level

Tech

• Fixed a bug that forced Horizontal FOV scaling even if that option was overridden in the Engine.ini file ^{SuperUltraWide fans rejoice}

2023.09.27 PATCH 0.1.4.47671

Our short term focus will be improving the new player experience (without killing the spirit of the game) and balancing. Expect some nerfs and buffs in the Friday’s patch!

Also, as always, we’ll be taking care of various bugfixes (e.g. 2nd and 3rd Mysterium of various spells and items) and QoL updates. We’re working on the game’s roadmap as well. Eta? Next week or the week after. We are having tons of discussions based on your feedback and need to make some decisions first!

Highlights

• Swapped Shockwave with Fireballs in the Research order ^{community feedback}
  • After a lot of player feedback, we realized that Shockwave was way less new player friendly than we thought – and as such it didn’t work well as the very first spell you research, and probably your first research ever. Fireballs should fill that role much more better. If you already researched Shockwave, it will remain safely in your inventory.

Gameplay

• Fixed weapon upgrade objectives, now correctly marks them as complete
• ‘No Ammo’ warning shows up when using Demonic Weapon
• Blunderbusser and Dimacher now show properly on the minimap (instead of as tiny white dots) ^{community request}
• Preyer now becomes invincible after stepping into a portal ^{community feedback}
• Another pack of fixes helping ghosts find their way
• Ghost wont startle you now when you are too close
• Removed flickering from Wisps and trapped enemy souls during the Soultrap event
• Removed mine spawnpoints around one of the Castle’s starting portal
• Tweaked duration of the killcam after death
  • This should help understanding what killed you
  • Killcam will be improved / longer in the next patch
• Boss on the Scarlet Coast should always spawn now
• Fixed locations for two bugged Gatekeeper’s “batteries” – they spawned inside geometry, which made them unreachable
• New sounds for the Ring of Excreta
• Tweaked the way the Gatekeeper’s Power Sources’ idle sound propagates in space. This change should make them much easier to locate
• Chests now spawn more evenly throughout the level
• Fixed a bug that prevented flying Effigies from displaying their particle effects: beams, explosions on death and teleportation effects
• Fixed a bug that prevented most Effigies from correctly displaying their healthbars and names when you targeted them
• New treasure and event icons
• Fixed a bug that caused Survival Ritual to Succeed even if you moved too far from it.

Tech

• Added ability to remap Map button (default M)
• Improvements to the off-navigable area teleport logic
• Fixed elite enemies effects remaining post death
• Significantly less textures streaming in the Castle
  • The Castle remains less smooth that we know it can be. Consider …not Ultra. Top men are working to discover the source of the curse!
• Miscellaneous collision fixes and visual polish ^{community reports}
• Fixed bug with the last row of Arcana being not entirely clickable
• Fixed bug with icons on the map being not clickable at times
• Fixed bug with black screen after pressing Esc immediately after death
• Fixed a bug that was causing the a part of the drops’ sounds to play twice
• Fixed a bug which caused Shielbearer to play his Shield calling animation twice in a quick succession

Known issue/next patch

• 21:9 and other ultra widescreen ratios don’t work for everyone
  • We have a fix but it’s an engine-level change. We didn’t want to risk it with this patch, needs extensive testing first

2023.09.25 – PATCH 0.1.3.47576

Highlights

• The focus of this patch was to finally reign in Calamities and the Warden. And thus: ^{community Astro colab}
  • Warden now has way lower chance to trigger Calamity
  • Warden now moves slightly faster and might decide to abandon his search for you earlier
  • Destroying traps doesn’t raise the calamity roll requirement (it’s still there, it’s just not growing anymore for now)
  • Calamities now grant sweet drops on completion. Use them wisely

Gameplay

• Improved base Echo power and increased max ammo capacity (36 to 48)
  • Very long story short: slightly more damage to pellets, less to explosion make it a better gun early on (can one-shot Husks with a well-placed headshot). This massively improves its early game ammo economy, makes it viable at low-level content and more fun to level-up.
• Reduced Hunger base range 16>15m and ADS range 22.5>21m
  • Our first nerf, rip the dream. But the gun was too hot. We slightly lowered its effective range to keep things relatively balanced, while keeping it beginner-friendly
• Added low ammo notifications except for Demonic Weapons
  • Ammo economy is super important in the game but it’s easy to stop counting in the heat of the battle
• Lowered kills required to upgrade Echo and Hailstorm
  • Taking their lower max ammo reserves into consideration, both Echo and Hailstorm were supposed to have lower upgrade kill requirements. They did not, until now.
• Added “Stun Power” to weapon inspect screen. An important stat!
• Ammo Chests can no longer spawn in two extremely hard to reach places
• Increased Mines proximity trigger delay by 0.1 sec
  • Changes to explosions speeds made it a bit to difficult to get out of the mine’s range without taking damage
• Removed almost every level up notification like “A new event unveiled”.
  • This was an infospam, didn’t really add anything, ruined the mystery and made no sense (witch reacting in 0.01s after levelup)
• Added fail-safes to Effigy of Scabs that should prevent wandering enemies from acquiring permanent invincibility shields
• Calamity Catalysts no longer spawn the portals inside Village geometry
• Flame barrels now properly set both enemies and the player on fire
• Dramatically lowered the amount of damage flame barrels deal to the player per tick
• Reduced tick damage from the poisonous flowers
• Enemies should now properly spawn in the Castle’s garden, and grant Crystal at the end
• Sentinels now block damage when closed

Tech/graphics/audio

• New skulls and ammo map icons
• Fixed multiple instances of displaying incorrect mouse input icons
• Tweaks to crouching animations across all weapons
• Dash should no longer kill you ^{community pain relief initiative}
• Fix to player fall damage vo sound not playing if the velocity was low enough to take fall damage but not high enough to trigger the harshest animation
• Minor systemic AI optimization
• Minor shader, texture and geometry fixes

2023.09.22 – PATCH 0.1.2.47492

Highlights

• We had a fantastic opening hour …for people who knew how to play the game. A few nuclear changes to make it new player friendlier:
  • Increased the starting weapon range
  • The world (seed) when you’re level 1 is now the same for all players (i.e. minimum potentially punishing RNG on the first map)
  • Lowered the cost of the first three level ups
  • Apothecary and the crafting of Healing Elixirs are now available from the start instead of Level 2
  • Husk Archers arrows don’t set the target on fire anymore
• The witch reacts to your growth but it was too much (not to mention bugged). To make the game more fun for higher level players:
  • Way less often Calamities for “aimlessly wandering about”
  • Wretch Calamity (the cold one) requirement lowered to 10 kills
  • Assassin Calamity (the slo-mo one that lowers health) shouldn’t request Assassin spawns while it’s inactive now
  • Grenadier now comes into enemy pool at lvl 15 (still can be triggered earlier in events), other enemies unlock after him
  • New traps are added a bit slower to the pool. Max number of traps on the map rises slightly slower with further level-ups
• 21:9 and other non-16:9 aspect ratios should work properly now
  • Also, more resolutions available for your display device

Gameplay

• Inventory: added option to consume entire stack of crystalized witchfire at once ^{community suggestion}
• Vastly reduced the intensity of the stamina exhaustion post process effect ^{community request}
  • (we’re working on some additional options to turn some of the effects off – but that will require a little bit more work)
• Iron Cross now correctly progresses towards its upgrade requirements
• Crouch Toggle/Hold option now works correctly
• Wisp now stops spawning new enemies when players move too far away
  • Moreover, if the players moves too far and doesn’t come back for a long while, the event fails and all spawned enemies de-materialize
• Proximity mines trigger zone no longer stops projectiles
• Henbane now heals up to maximum health in the Elixir’s current healing duration
• Multiple Cursed Chests can no longer spawn in the same spot
• Enemies now teleport to a navigable area after too much time outside of it
• Settings: QoL improvement: settings no longer stop at the first or the last option (you can cycle through them using one button) ^{community request}
• Apothecary: changed ‘Herbs’ to ‘Angelica’ to avoid confusion
• Melee/Spell/Elixir + Dash combo no longer makes the weapon disappear
• Melee now snaps properly to all enemies
• Enemies won’t attack until they’ve fully materialized
• Inventory: added section which displays ALL items
• Removed misplaced trap spawnpoints that could trigger as soon as the player entered the Irongate Castle
• Galley Slave now grants rewards on death
• Fixed an Event-related infinite witchfire exploit (who found it?)
• The ghost that leaves footsteps should have less problems leading the player to his possessions

Tech/graphics/audio

• Fixed evil sinkholes in some rocks geometry
• Fixed missing collision on crates and other stuff in the quarry
• Miscellaneous visual polish
• Tweaked volume of impact sounds.
  • This should make shooting and kills even more satisfying
• Tweaked the volume of the explosions when using the Ring of Excreta
  • Cool new sounds coming soon

Known issues for the next patch

• We now know exactly what causes DLSS Frame Generation crashes but might take a moment to deploy a proper fix

2023.09.21 – PATCH 0.1.1.47414

Highlights

• Doubled the Angelica spawn rate community suggestion
• Fiend is now green on the radar instead of red ^{justice for Bobby}
• Negative luck modifier now properly resets after triggering Calamity
• Lowered the chance for Calamity to trigger on traps interactions
  • Both above mean less Calamity chaining / a bit more rare Calamities ^{community and Astro colab}

Tech/graphics/audio

• Added a potential DLSS FG related crash fix.
  • Added warning information when using DLSS Frame Generation. It is known to cause crashes for some players, we’re working on a proper fix
• Fixed visual glitch on some open chests on lower quality settings
• Castle gate chains no longer levitate by the forbidden magic
• Fixed invisible forest collision, few more visual fixes
• Fixed a bug which caused the headshot sound’s volume to be controlled by the Dialogue Volume in the Audio Settings

Gameplay

• Barrels can no longer spawn inside chests
• Cursed Chest can no longer spawn an excessive number of enemies
• Added missing collision to Cursed Chest
• Itinerant portal (the orange one) properly spawns in every run now
• Elixir Station in Apothecary now properly shows the elixirs produced
• Your remains now properly show on radar ^{community suggestion}
• Cricket’s inspect screen no longer shows an incorrect Clip Size
• Warden’s map icon should now properly disappear with him

2023.09.20 – Hotfix 0.1.0.47362

• Strange Coins are now Bound instead of Unbound, meaning you don’t lose them on death. That was the idea from the start, they were Unbound by mistake
• More Arcana packs to research. We have reshuffled Arcana close to release and …puff, some disappeared for a second
• Lowered unlock requirements for Incantations. They didn’t really need a higher level (15/30) req, now you can evolve your weapons earlier