Blightbound News

For those who are Blightbound...

We got there! Update 0.3: Wolfpack is up and running, and we couldn't be happier. There's a lot to unpack and read here, so let's get started!


[h3]New Features[/h3]
- A new area is ready to be explored by your heroes in the Underhold: The Creeping Blight. This area features a new boss, and new music.
- Sunwalker Kromn's personal story can now be completed.
- Desert Mouse's personal story can now be completed.
- Karrogh, the Fearless Wolf can now be found and rescued to join your band of heroes. (Note that his story can’t be completed yet: only his first three story beats are included.)
- Matriarch Wodania can now be found and rescued to join your band of heroes.
- 8 new items have been added to the game.
- The elite enemy “Supplier Lurvid" can now be encountered when adventuring.
- The elite enemy “Shellrot" can now be encountered when adventuring.
[h3]General[/h3]
- Fixed an issue where some Wretches didn't fade out correctly after dying.
- The amount of completion rewards on the result screen now matches what's promised on map select.
- When finishing a level and entering the Aetheri transport beam, the victory screen should now always trigger for all players.
- Fixed an issue where players were able to stop their guided movement at the start of rooms by pressing and holding the interact button.
- Dismembered limbs should now have blood trails following them.
- Added a subtle visual effect for when the player is under the effect of the speed buff shrine.
- Capes on characters should now no longer appear glitchy.
- Turned off compression on all files to reduce loading times on faster hard disks.
- Changed file format for voice files. The game is now about 1GB smaller on disk.
[h3]Gameplay[/h3]
Currently the notoriety system has too much of an impact on the game, being the only way for players to reach satisfying difficulties and rewards. This both makes gaining notoriety feel essential, and losing it unnecessarily punishing. Additionally, players who were able to focus on notoriety could gain too many top-tier items faster than intended. The following changes are meant to address these issues.
- The difficulties selectable on the map are now randomly distributed instead of just random. This guarantees a variety of difficulties being available even without notoriety.
- Fixed an issue where enemy scaling was weaker than intended. Enemies should now keep better pace with the heroes and differences in difficulty should be more impactful.
- The rewards on the dungeon select screen will no longer display their quality. Instead the quality will be randomly decided at the end of a run, where higher difficulties will give players a higher chance at better items.
- The amount of highest-tier items that can result from this is limited. Playing at higher difficulties will increase this limit.
- Swapped around Tek'ka's and Kujuk's Ultimate skills: Tek'ka now has Summon Spirit, and Kujuk now has Frost Skull.
- Mini-reworked the Frost Skull skill. The player now becomes invincible for its entire duration (default 8 seconds). However, when getting hit by enemy attacks, the duration is reduced by 1 second for each sustained hit (the duration is the health bar of the Frost Skull, in a way). When returning back to normal form, gain 1 second of invincibility.
- Unleash spirits will now properly damage all enemies in the damage area previsualisation. The skill now also executes Wretches below 50% health (with the exception of elite Wretches).
- Triss can no longer revive herself when a Damage over Time effect was active on an enemy, causing her passive to heal her back up from 0.
- The Phalanxes spawned are now able to hit large enemies.
- Khuliath will now no longer land on obstacles during the fight.
- Khuliath will now no longer play a heavy camera shake before landing when transitioning to a new area.
- Khuliath's Mist Shout now instantly kills the player instead of simply damaging them, and pierces through invincibility and damage-reducing effects.
- NPCs now no longer get stuck inside the mist wall during Khuliath's third phase.
[h3]Items[/h3]
- Updated Venom's Vault passive description.
- Nerfed the amount of damage over time Venom's Vault passive deals.
- Players can no longer go over the stat cap by abusing stat potions.
- Dokalt's Ring now shows the proper amount of health you have to drop below before the effect becomes active (40%).
[h3]Refuge[/h3]
- Increased the chance of getting better quality item options at the merchant.
- Kromn's lifegoal should now show the correct amount of light shards collected, and will reinstate any shards that have gone missing in the past.
- Controller users are now no longer able to operate the Early Access popup when it is minimized.
- The artisan buttons' highlight state in the refuge is now a little more clear.
- Updated the Amalgamation visuals in the bestiary to no longer have visually inconsistent borders from the other entries.
- Tweaked the hover-over animation for items in your inventory.
- Crafting requirements will now show when hovering over recipe items and over the forge button instead of just the item.
[h3]Interface[/h3]
- Map select will now show what map is selected by the player, including the random option
- Tweaked the filling door icon to not fall behind it's black background and improved the contrast of the icon a bit when it hovers in the middle of a door's glow.
[h3]Levels[/h3]
- The raids that get spawned during the second part of Darkness' Embrace now spawn a little bit away from players, giving them some more time to react to the surrounding threats.
- When players fail to get back to the beginning within time at the end of Darkness' Embrace, they no longer get instantly killed. Instead, a difficult encounter spawns.
- Players can no longer jump or blink behind a door in the Inner Graves section of For Whom the Bell Tolls and get stuck there.
- After defeating the Blood Magus on Peak's end in the Hemomancer level, the game should no longer softlock by not allowing all party members to pass through to the Blightmist.
- Reduced the collision size of rocks in Khuliath the Mountain Giant level.
[h3]Networking[/h3]
- Optimised netcode to use less bandwidth, especially reducing bandwidth peaks when entering a new room.
- Improved position syncing, making enemies and other players move more smoothly and with less lag.
- The door vote progress visual should now always fill smoothly, even when not the host.
- Clients will no longer see the death animation of an enemy several times.
- Clients will no longer see a special effect repeated several times.

It's a hefty update, so make sure to read it all. Remember: reading is power!

Thanks for sticking around and being patient folks, we can't wait to show you what's next in update 0.4: Helping Hands.

Stay healthy,
SlowWolf

For those who are Blightbound...

As Wednesday inches closer, we found a new bug in the Wolfpack update that causes some pretty severe issues, including crashes. As such, there's a chance that the update gets delayed.

First off, it's no fun playing when there's a big issue like this in the game. We know this because of how the game has performed in previous updates. Desyncs? Khuliath refusing to die? Those are a big woof, size large. We've dealt with these issues, but we didn't find those before releases allowed.

This time, we have.

We want to make sure these updates are fun, not a moment where people are anxious about their loot and progress just vanishing.

The Ronnies are still hoping to have Wolfpack out tomorrow, and I personally am psyched to play when it comes out. Dungeon 2, the Creeping Blight, is a super cool dungeon, and both the new characters are a lot of fun. The new gear, completed stories, and changes to difficulty selection are all super exciting, the last of which allows for instantly challenging content. If anything is delayed, I'll let you folks know as soon as I can.

Keep your eyes peeled,

SlowWolf

For those who are Blightbound...

As we continue work on the Wolfpack Patch, here's a quick hotfix for you folks. The big news is for folks with lower end GPUs and intel cards, we have a new low texture option and should have eliminated the majority of on-launch-crashes, respectively. Take a read!

20 August 2020

[h3]New Features[/h3]

• Added option for Low texture quality.
  
• Fixed that many Intel GPUs couldn't start the game because High texture quality uses too much texture memory (they run on Low now).
  

[h3]Gameplay[/h3]

• Fixed an issue where enemies would become and stay invulnerable after spawning, causing a softlock. If you still run into one of these, please fill out a report.
  
• Fixed an issue where client players did not acquire any survivors at the end of a dungeon run, resulting in little to no Prosperity gain.
  
• Fixed an issue where one of Ezzouhn's Phalanxes would sometimes not spawn when the skill was used near collision.
  
• Fixed an issue where players could become trapped by Tentacle traps while using Lawbringer, causing some weird behaviour as well as making the Warrior invincible until the next room.
  

[h3]Items[/h3]

• Updated Gorman's Root: it now makes use of a new animation, and the item effect only triggers when you are in combat.
  
• Fixed an issue where Bloodrain's item passive triggered on switches and destructible barrels and chests.
  

Hopefully this fix ends up being a little boost to your experience!

Stay safe,
SlowWolf
Community Manager

Hot off the presses, it's another patch! This time, we made some updates to Khuliath's fight (he shouldn't be so hard to kill due to invulnerability anymore), and we made a change to Monster Rings. Take a look down below!

17 August 2020

[h3]Refuge[/h3]

• Small visual improvements to the Refuge.
  

[h3]Gameplay[/h3]

Khuliath was causing issues for some players, where his encounter didn’t progress the way it should. This caused him to get stuck behind collision, and players unable to continue to the next arena. We’ve cleaned up this fight, making sure the fight always progresses normally.
• Fixed an issue where Khuliath did not jump to his next arena properly, causing a softlock in most cases.
  
• Slightly adjusted collision in Khuliath's second arena (there was a segment where players could walk on air).
  
  Tek'ka and Kujuk’s Gravity Well is effective, and a little too effective against bosses. We’ve removed the pulling effect of the Gravity Well when used against some of the bigger enemies.
• The bosses Writhing Oracle, Gruegant and Khuliath are no longer affected by the pull of Kujuk's Gravity Well.
  
  We noticed the passive effect of Monster Soul Ring and its Greater version was doing its job a little too well, sometimes creating monstrous (LUL) increases. We’re toning it down a bit, so that the effect only gets applied once.
• Fixed an issue where the bonus effect of Monster Soul Ring and Greater Monster Soul Ring was applied at the start of each room, causing insane numbers in some cases.
  

Hopefully this patch allows players to fight Khuliath without issue now. I wonder how tough that guy is now on notoriety 10?

Stay healthy!
-SlowWolf

For those who are Blightbound...

Patch 0.2 is out, which is super exciting for a whole list a reasons: this list of reasons, to be precise! Take a look at the patch notes below, grab a favourite beverage, and get settled; there's a lot of stuff to go through. It's so jam packed that we're pretty sure it might explode!


[h3]New Features[/h3]

• A new area is ready to be explored by your heroes in the Blood Ridge: Khuliath, the Humongore. This area features a new boss and new boss music.
  
• Creen's personal story can now be completed.
  
• Ezzouhn the Seeker can now be found and rescued to join your band of heroes.
  
• Nilbous Flann can now be found and rescued to join your band of heroes. (Note that his story can’t be completed yet: only his first story beat is included.)
  
• 11 new items have been added to the game for you to loot, craft and experiment with.
  
• The elite enemy “Golem Eye" can now be encountered when adventuring.
  

[h3]General[/h3]

• System error windows now show 'Blightbound' in the title instead of 'Awesomenauts'.
  
• Tweaked the wretch shout visual effect.
  
• Different visuals have been added for elite Blood Magii, the Meatclots, the Iron pursuers.
  
• Loading control schemes will now no longer potentially crash the game.
  
• Improved impact effects for all forge-related abilities.
  
• Reduced texture size by a small amount.
  
• PS4 icons are now shown in the configure controls menu when using a PS4 controller.
  
• Reduced stutter at start of game for character positions.
  
• Early access information panel now shows teasers for update 2.
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur when a player leaves the party.
  
• Fixed a number of potential crashes related to party interactions.
  
• Slightly reduced network load with spotty internet connections.
  
• Fixed that some menu interactions like dragging items didn’t function properly for some players.
  

And a sneaky quick hotfix: we made some changes to the way Cooldown Reduction is calculated this patch, but item and character builds heavily invested into CDR became way too spammy as a result. We’re toning down Cooldown Reduction across the board.

• Nerfed cooldown reduction across all items: all items now grant reduced cooldown reduction.
  
• Nerfed the amount of cooldown reduction the Will stat grants: it now grants 2% per stat point instead of 5%.
  
• When you have Dena’s Lemna equipped, you no longer enter a new room with a portion of your health missing.
  

[h3]Tutorial[/h3]

• The popup that asks to try Korrus' two skills in the tutorial now fades out properly.
  
• The Meatclot at the end of the Tutorial is now correctly named Ramkraak instead of M'Glord.
  
• The Meatclot at the end of the Tutorial no longer spawns items on death.
  

[h3]Gameplay[/h3]

• Increased the difficulty a little bit. The goal is to increase it incrementally instead of in one go to see how players react to the new changes without immediately overdoing it.
  
• Improved pathfinding for larger characters.
  
• The bloodspawn modifier no longer has projectiles shoot upon taking damage from the named enemy.
  
• The bloodspawn modifier now has visual effects.
  
• Added visual effects for corpse heal enemy modifier.
  
• Enemy cooldowns should no longer be unnaturally low.
  
• The Horrid's projectile will now spawn a Tentacle Trap when hitting collision instead of terrain.
  
• The Blood Magus' beam should now no longer easily miss the player.
  
• Blood Magus' clones should now no longer leave their life drain skills in mid-air after dying.
  
• The Blood Magus now no longer turns around to try and hit his beam attack before shooting when the player was standing close to the Blood Magus.
  
• The Blood Magus in the Ominous cave now only shows up once all party members are present.
  
• Blood magus' bloodpools should now no longer persist after the Blood Magus dies.
  
• Enemies inside of cells are now invincible, preventing players from killing and interacting with them before they start the encounter.
  
• Kromn now correctly triggers his sunburnt effect when using his Bull Charge.
  
• Tweaked the warrior charge targeting visual.
  
• Adjusted the cooldown reduction calculation to ensure the cooldown reduction coincides with how much is communicated to the player.
  
• Reversal shield no longer has a grammatical error in it's description.
  
• Clarified Kujuk's Fast passive skill description.
  
• Spirit shot now has proper spacing between damage percentages.
  
• Sword strike now has proper spacing between damage percentages.
  
• Summon Spirits now has an indication of how much damage it deals when used in it's description.
  
• Death from above skill now properly resets it's cooldown when intended if you are not the host.
  
• Improved the Phalanx ability's visual effects.
  
• Prevented that survivors that were revived, killed, and revived again counted as two separate survivors rescues. This process could be repeated indefinitely.
  
• Removed silence status effect on NPCs.
  
• Characters will now no longer be able to suddenly fly off to the side when interacting with a lever or pushable block.
  
• Creen now uses the correct animation when using his Warcry skill.
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur when first loading into a new level.
  
• Dena’s Lemna’s ability now works correctly for non-host players.
  
• Dena’s Lemna’s ability now gives the correct amount of bonus health for warriors and mages.
  
• Dena’s Lemna’s ability now also procs on self-heal by Rage attack for warriors.
  
• Sunrise and Sunset’s abilities now trigger correctly for non-host players.
  
• Passive abilities now works correctly for non-host players for Malborys, Creen, Kromn, and Triss.
  
• Creen’s passive ability now deals 150% increased damage as indicated in the description, instead of 200%.
  
• Updated Desert Mouse’s passive ability description to be more accurate.
  

[h3]Items[/h3]

• Improved the general crafting experience by adding more crafting recipes for existing items.
  
• Legendary story goal rewards are no longer sellable at the merchant.
  
• 50% blight potions now no longer recover way too much blight.
  
• Bonecut's description now has been improved.
  
• Increased Bonecut explosion damage from 100 to 300.
  
• Bonecut now gives the player a critical explosion damage based on crits instead of based on interrupts.
  
• Sunstruck staff now gives players a haste effect for the appropriate amount when the reversal shield's lifetime is extended by perks.
  
• Improved Bonespike's visual effects.
  
• Blightbane now casts an additional shield on your own location.
  
• Made Skullpiercer piercing.
  
• Gorman Root now has the following added effect: snare enemies around you every 5 seconds.
  

[h3]Refuge[/h3]

• When buying multiple items shop items no longer overlap.
  
• The Refuge now shows build spots where artisans can be purchased.
  
• The resource panel in the in-game escape menu now shows the correct amount of Aetheri Sparks.
  
• Added a percentage symbol for a couple of perks and passives.
  
• Various fixes to button indicators at the bottom of the Refuge.
  
• Closing a Refuge panel by clicking outside of it should now always work.
  
• Renamed "quartermaster inventory" to "inventory".
  
• Improved controller navigation.
  
• Focus on the refuge's sidebar using a controller will now darken all menu elements correctly.
  
• You now need to actually reach the right prosperity level before being able to select a single character.
  
• The prosperity level for unlocking for playing with a single hero has been moved to a lower prosperity level.
  
• Removed the ability to to skip the elder's dialogue immediately.
  
• Repositioned the notoriety icon above the nodes in map select.
  
• Added a tooltip for the notoriety icon in mapselect.
  
• Fixed difficulty bar spilling out of area when picking a random map while having notoriety
  
• Swapped Elder dialog and reward popup when completing a quest (dialogue now comes first).
  
• Added indicator for when a dialogue is skippable.
  
• Completing a refuge quest now no longer shows broken text.
  
• The Mentor's activity log should now no longer have pixelated/grainy images.
  
• Meatclot is now no longer referred to as devourer in his bestiary entry.
  
• The hover-over and active state for refuge buildings in the left sidebar should now be a little more clear.
  
• Made the colours used in skill description texts more consistent.
  
• Tooltips should now no longer show for items that are outside of the inventory window's view.
  
• Closed off the goals section in map select as long as bounties aren't available.
  
• Items now allign properly in the region reward section of mapselect.
  
• Increased scrolling speed for quartermaster items, heroes and craftable items.
  
• Increased scrolling speed for the mentor menu.
  
• The Early Access information panel at the bottom of the refuge screen now properly layers behind all other popups that might show up when expanded.
  
• Updated all character portraits to better reflect their in-game appearance.
  
• The unlock popup for 'Mentor' now no longer uses the incorrect name 'Sage'.
  
• Reaching prosperity level 19 now correctly shows what you've unlocked.
  
• Removed refuge occupancy limits, and replaced related prosperity rewards with other rewards (Aetheri sparks over time, blight reduction per run, hero statpoints).
  

[h3]Interface[/h3]

• Replaced a missing texture popping up when disconnecting a local player's controller.
  
• Portraits that show when party members are off-screen should look less choppy.
  
• In 'For whom the bell tolls' the 'bell chimes left' popup no longer has an empty image at the top.
  
• In 'For whom the bell tolls' the 'bell chimes left' popup now has a space between the text and the amount of tolls left.
  
• Warriors should no longer sometimes show 2 rage indicators instead of the intended 3.
  
• Prevented instances where wizards and rogues had 4 class resources by default instead of the intended 3.
  
• Quest communication now blocks other popups until complete.
  
• Enemy health bars should now show their intended colours.
  
• Restored interact visuals to all pushable blocks.
  
• Made interact visuals to describe their actions instead of simply saying 'interact'.
  

[h3]Levels[/h3]

• Improved collision on several locations.
  
• Updated visuals for switches.
  
• Added dust effects when pushing pushable blocks.
  
• Switchable block obstacles now no longer have their collision linger around when lowered.
  
• Added more visual flair to locked gates.
  
• Added more visual flair to wooden gates in Blood Ridge.
  
• The visual of the lasers in the Elevator sequence in The Descent will now no longer show up for a fraction of a second when it has reached its end-point.
  

[h3]Sounds[/h3]

• Sounds created by the Pyroblast ability, the Blood Magus and Maggots will no longer be affected by the music volume slider.
  
• Tweaked sound effects for the elevator sequence in 'The Descent'.
  
• Tweaked sound effects for the Blood Magus.
  
• Tweaked Meatclot's voice.
  
• Backstab sound effects should now play properly.
  
• Changed walking and impact sounds for warriors in their Awaken Ancient form.
  
• Updated wretch voices and sound effects.
  
• Pursuer's charge sounds and voices have been improved.
  
• Added extra sound effects to blood pools.
  
• Added ducking when voice lines are being played.
  
• Converted all music and sound sample rates to 44.1kHz.
  
• tweaked several interface and menu sounds.
  
• The loading screen music now properly fades into game music.
  
• Rescued heroes now no longer play voice lines for other characters when rescued.
  

That's it! That's the whole list of changes. We know that there might be other issues that have cropped up as a result of all of these changes, but we'll be ready for them and squash them the best we can. This, on top of beating one of the biggest Desync bugs out there last week, bring Blightbound into the best form it has EVER been!

We hope you enjoy your time in the Blight, hero. There'll be Roadmap news soon, as we begin to move forward with our plans for the game.

Stay safe,
-SlowWolf
Community Manager for Ronimo Games