Astral Ascent News

[p][/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]We are thrilled to finally reveal the future of Astral Ascent with our official 2026 Roadmap! Since our 1.0 launch, we have been hard at work expanding the Astral Prison, adding new ways to fight the Zodiacs, and growing this incredible universe. [/p][p]That's countless escape attempts, thousands of Papa Yalee stories discovered, and millions of spells cast in the Garden. It’s been an incredible journey, and we want to say a huge THANK YOU for your long-standing support![/p][p]As revealed in the video, a new challenger is breaking into the prison...[/p][p][/p][h2]Arven the Wolf Blade is coming in only 2 months on May 14![/h2][p][/p][p]We are very happy to announce that you can now wishlist Arven - The Wolf Blade. [/p][p][/p][p]You can get this DLC for FREE if you backed the Fallen Fates's Kickstarter at the Loner Pack tier or above. Check our Fallen Fates Kickstarter page for late pledge![/p][p][/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][h3]ARVEN, THE WOLF BLADE - [/h3][p]Play as Arven, a Ranger of relentless determination who heard of a group of heroes trapped within an Astral Prison. Fighting alongside the wolf Kat, his hunting companion, this new hero had no other choice but to lend his blade to those fighting for their survival.[/p][p][/p][p]Arven is a character from Fallen Fates, the upcoming action RPG by Hibernian Workshop.[/p][p][/p][h3]DLC CONTENT -[/h3][p] [/p]

• [p]Brand new mechanic - Arven never travels without Kat. Traverse the astral prisons in good company with this wolf who will follow you throughout your escape attempts. (Compatible with the Celestial Heaven DLC: your pet and Kat will follow you side by side).[/p][p][/p]

• [p]25 new unique spells - use the greatsword to create powerful slashes, moves nimbly while setting up explosive traps, and more![/p]

• [p]Signature Spell - throws a hook onto an enemy and dashes towards them, while summoning Kat to assist you in battle and follow you around the battlefield. [/p]
• [p]30 Associated Perks to adapt Arven's Signature Spell to your playstyle.[/p][p] [/p]
• [p]2 Weapons types for different playstyles : [/p]
  • [p]Alpha Sword - medium-range attacks swinging and slashing enemies. [/p]
  • [p]Ethereal Missiles - use magic to shoot powerful blasts of energy from a long range. [/p]
• [p]6 Weapon Passives - Each weapon comes with 3 unique passives, making Arven and Kat an even deadlier duo. [/p]

• [p]Stellar Voice Acting - Arven is fully voiced in Japanese and English by the incredibly talented Tagui Omi and Ben Starr, respectively. [/p]
• [p]New Papa Yalee Stories - 4 new stories to learn about Arven and Kat's mysterious origins.[/p]
• [p] Cinematics and ending screens - brand new cinematics and a new ending screen have been added for Arven![/p][p][/p][h3]ADDITION TO THE BASE GAME - [/h3][p][/p][p]Even if you do not own the DLC, you still will be able to- [/p]
  • [p]See Arven hanging out in the Garden.[/p]
  • [p]Collect and use 2 Arven Echoes during the runs.[/p]
  • [p]Fight Arven's Shadow Clone.[/p]

[h2]Also coming on May 14 for FREE:[/h2][p]And that's not all! This update comes with completely FREE content for some guaranteed epic new runs ! A huge rework of the perks system ! So much is still under wraps, but bear with us, we'll be back soon with more info![/p][p][/p][p][/p][h2]Roadmap 2026[/h2][p][/p][p][/p][p]More to come this year with :[/p]

• [p]Steam Workshop integration[/p]
• [p]??? Mysterious update ???[/p]
• [p]Boss Rush [/p]

[p]Follow us on Youtube, we will soon post DevLogs videos to show you more ! [/p][p]We hope you are as excited as us for the upcoming updates! Have an excellent day, [/p][p]- The Hibernian Workshop Team[/p]

[p]Hello Wardens![/p][p]The Lunar New Year is a moment of celebration shared by millions of people around the world, and we wanted to join in the festivities with all of you! 🧧[/p][p]We are sending a special thought to our incredible community in Asia and everyone celebrating this tradition today. Your passion and support since the beginning of Astral Ascent mean the world to us.[/p][p]✨ A New Seasonal Atmosphere[/p][p]To mark this occasion, we decided to bring a festive touch to the game for everyone to enjoy.[/p][p]We have deployed a special atmospheric update. When you return to the Hub, you'll notice the Garden has been decorated with traditional lanterns and new warm lighting animations.[/p][p]And this isn't just for today: this transformation is becoming an official seasonal event! From now on, the Garden will automatically dress up in lights every year at this time. It’s a new tradition settling permanently into Astral Ascent.[/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][hr][/hr][p]⚔️ Meet ARVEN: Your Next Hero[/p][p]Since we are entering the Year of the Horse—a symbol of energy and passion—it felt like the perfect moment to finally unveil our next fighter.[/p][p]Here is a very first look at ARVEN![/p][p][/p][p]Arven will join the roster as the 6th playable hero in our upcoming DLC. We can’t wait to show you his gameplay, which will bring a completely new dynamic to combat with more than 20 new spells to master![/p][p]🎁 Free for Fallen Fates Backers[/p][p]This DLC (including Arven) will be completely free for everyone who supported our next project, Fallen Fates, at the Loner Tier or above![/p][p]If you haven't participated yet, there is still time to join and secure your free access to this DLC while supporting the studio's future.[/p][p]👉 Join the Fallen Fates adventure here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hibernian-workshop/fallen-fates/[/p][hr][/hr][p]📅 A quick update on the release[/p][p]We are working hard on Arven to ensure he brings a fresh and exciting dynamic to the game.[/p][p]To give him the polish he deserves, we are now targeting a release in May 2026 (instead of March). It means a little bit more waiting, but it’s for a good cause: making sure the experience is perfect for you![/p][p]In the meantime, please enjoy the lanterns and the festive vibes in the Garden.
[/p][p]Have a fantastic holiday![/p][p]- The Hibernian Workshop Team
[/p][p] Complete patch-notes: [dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p]

[p]Hello everyone! ːtaffyː[/p][p]
First of all, we wish each and everyone of you an happy new year, may 2026 be a great year for you! ːmeltadaːOn our side 2025 was an amazing year! We announced our new game Fallen Fates, we kept making great updates for Astral Ascent including new DLCs and collabs with games we love : Children of Morta and Dead Cells. [/p][p]We improved the overall game experience and it ended up being our best selling year for Astral Ascent, so thank you all so much for your trust in us and we are super motivated to keep bringing new updates and improve the game in 2026 starting today with the release of Update 2.5 : The Ravenswatch Sentinel, our 16th major update for Astral Ascent!
[/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]Before jumping into the content of this update and what comes next, we wanted to let you know about Ravenswatch if you don't know about it!

[dynamiclink][/dynamiclink]They have an amazing set of characters, you can play it in co-op, it plays and feels amazing! They are also french developers and seeing how much they care about their game made us want to make a collab with them and we are so happy they accepted ːmelhappyː[/p][p]When we announced this collab, someone from the community made this comment :
[/p][p][/p][p]We could not agree more, they have been making great updates, great content and today they just released a new playable character : Merlin!

Don't hesitate to check their game if you haven't already ːzagplsːWe even have a bundle with them !

[dynamiclink][/dynamiclink]
Let's get back to Astral Ascent update!

You can find full Patch Notes here -
[dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][p][/p][hr][/hr][h2]New Room : The Hourglass of Dreams[/h2][h2]
[/h2][p]Inspired by the world of Reverie, the Sandman will allow you to upgrade your gambits rarity level for Quartz.[/p][p] [/p][p]We think it wasn't fun to refresh many times the Itinerant Merchant at Andromeda's Bar to find higher gambits to improve your builds so we came up with this idea of being able to use your quartz but to increase gambits you already have so taking a common Gambit can be useful and you can level it up later!

[/p][p]It can also make your negative gambits become positive gambits![/p][p][/p][hr][/hr][h2]New Echoes : The Vengeful Echoes[/h2][p][/p][p][/p][p]You can take 1 of these echoes when you visit the Hourglass of Dreams room, they are stronger than regular echoes and can only be found there. They are strong but they require a sacrifice, you need to sacrifice an Echo you already have in order to get one of them.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]We think it's a great thing because if you have an echo made for a build you dont want you can exchange it for an echo that will work for your build as the 5 new echoes conver all the builds elements![/p][p][/p][hr][/hr][h2]Improved onboarding[/h2][p][/p][p]You may have noticed we had a delay on our announced 2.5 update which was supposed to be about improved onboarding and Ravenswatch collab was supposed to be 2.6 but the delays made us merge both updates in today's update and we could not do all the improvements for onboarding we had in mind we still made some of them![/p][p][/p][p]The onboarding changes are there because you are so many telling us Astral Ascent has a lot of depth and is great to play but it also has a lot of mechanics to learn when starting the game and we hope new players can learn these mechanics more progressively to not feel overwhelmed!
[/p]

• [p]The number of Prowess choices has been increased from 3 to 4 (or from 2 to 3 with DL debuff)[/p]
• [p]The Prowess Statues now are unlocked over time to not give overwhelming informations from the start.[/p]
• [p]Imprints and blueprint spawn appear later in the game experience[/p]
• [p]Added hints about the currencies[/p]
• [p]The Star Guardians has been separated in 3 difficulty tiers:[/p]

[p][/p][h3]"Easy" ones[/h3][p]- Pegasus[/p][p]- Lupus[/p][p][/p][h3]"Medium" ones[/h3][p]- Hydra[/p][p]- Draco[/p][p] [/p][h3]"Hard" ones[/h3][p]- Monoceros[/p][p]- Sculptor[/p][p][/p][p]Now you'll have to defeat 2 times Easy bosses (any) to unlock Medium ones, and defeat 2 times Medium ones (any) to unlock Hard ones. This change has been made to balance more the difficulty of the Star Guardian for new players.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][hr][/hr][h2]A word about the Charity DLC[/h2][p][/p][p]Thanks so much to everyone for the reception of the Charity DLC : [/p][p][/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][p]We have sold more than 8700 units of the DLC and we will be donating soon to the association what we collected in 2025 and doing the same every year!

Though we don't want to discount this DLC because it all goes to charity we added it to the bundle of game + DLCs so you can have a 10% off from it if it's the only DLC you are missing!

[dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][p][/p][hr][/hr][h2]
What is coming next?[/h2][p][/p][p]Next update is supposed to be the Steam Workshop, we started working on several very cool features including sprites replacement, level design editor and more but it suffers several delays out of our control so we have to reorganize our schedule about it but don't worry we are already working on new content including Arven new playable character, the boss rush and more!

We also have many ideas to improve the run experiences and make the game even funnier! [/p][p][/p][p]One of our biggest surprise for Astral Ascent is also coming in 2026, something that has been in the work for more than a year now and it's so hard to keep the secret but 2026 is the year of the reveal so stay tuned for that![/p][p][/p][p]
To sum things up : a lot is coming, thanks so much for sticking with us, have a great time ingame and have an excellent week ːzagplsː
[/p][p]-The Hibernian Workshop Team[/p][p][/p][p][/p]

⭐Changes inspired by our community!

[h2]Major Features[/h2]

[hr][/hr]
• Increased the number of Prowess choices from 3 to 4
  [hr][/hr]
• New Special Room: Added a new type of Special Room: the Hourglass of Dreams, featuring characters from the Ravenswatch Universe.
  The Sandman provides the player with the ability to upgrade the Gambits on their Spells using Quartz.
  [hr][/hr]
• New Echo Tier: Vengeful Echoes: 5 New Echoes can be found in the Hourglass of Dreams room, the player can recruit one of these powerful Echoes in exchange for one of the Echoes they have.
  
  Scarlet: Applies Vulnerability and Pacification to enemies
  The Pied Piper: Applies Poison to enemies
  Beowulf: Applies Burn to enemies
  The Snow Queen: Applies Freeze to enemies
  Merlin: Applies Electrify to enemies
  

[h2]Balancing[/h2]

[hr][/hr]
• Onboarding: The following changes were done to improve the experience of new players, reducing the amount of mechanics presented at the start and unlocking them slowly for more digestibility:
  
  - Added a restriction to the Prowess Statues, the player must now defeat 3 Zodiacs (any) of each world to access the Prowess selection at the start of that world.
  
  - Adjusted the appearance of Imprint rooms and Blueprint loots in the early game, now they will only appear once the player has successfully reached the final boss at least once.
  
  - Adjusted the appearance chance of Star Guardians (Void Room) to reduce the difficulty of the early game. New players have to beat 2 World 1 Zodiacs (any) to unlock the Void room.
  
  - The 6 regular Star Guardians have been separated into 3 difficulty levels, new players will have to beat the first two to unlock the second two, and beat these two to find the last two.
  [hr][/hr]
• - Mana Steal gambits are not able to be evolved into astral rarity anymore, as it is too powerful.
  - Adjusted the prices for Gambit upgrades from The Sandman
  75, 150, 400 => 100, 200, 400 - ☄️ hotfix 2.5.1
  [hr][/hr]
• Some of the character Signature Spell Prowesses were incorrectly tagged in the Loot Affinity System, causing lower drop rates than intended - ☄️ hotfix 2.5.2

[h2]Interface[/h2]

[hr][/hr]
• Tutorial Improvements: - Added hints for the first time the player levels up
  - Added hint to the tutorial regarding the dash cooldown reset when hitting the enemy
  [hr][/hr]
• Added tips regarding room rewards (Gambits, Quartz, Keys...etc.) when selecting the next room
  [hr][/hr]
• Added the option to turn off room reward tips (on by default)
  

[h2]Visuals[/h2]

[hr][/hr]
• Leo and Libra's portrait animations were playing in reverse - ☄️ hotfix 2.5.2
  [hr][/hr]
• New Seasonal Decors: Lunar New Year decorations will appear in the hub for a limited time - ☄️ hotfix 2.5.2

[h2]Narrative Design[/h2]

[hr][/hr]
• Russian translation has been completed - ☄️ hotfix 2.5.1
  [hr][/hr]
• New Echoes description was the same for all echoes in Spanish - ☄️ hotfix 2.5.1

[h2]Miscellaneous[/h2]

[hr][/hr]
• Negative Gambits now have their own icons.
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

[hr][/hr]
• The Main Menu social icons would interact weirdly with mouse and produce a lot of noise by playing the SFX repeatedly
  [hr][/hr]
• One Andromeda challenge had visible background on the left - ☄️ hotfix 2.5.1
  [hr][/hr]
• The Cursed Telescope new hint wasn't displayed - ☄️ hotfix 2.5.1
  [hr][/hr]
• Auras Magic Weapon III and Warchief Bracers unique effects would conflict if the player had both auras equipped - ☄️ hotfix 2.5.1
  [hr][/hr]
• Auras that trigger effects ""on enemies with full life"" were incorrectly creating the effects infinitely in PvP - ☄️ hotfix 2.5.2

- The Hibernian Workshop Team

• Discord Server
• Twitter Account
• Official Store

[h3]Worlds are colliding again! [/h3][p]We are beyond thrilled to announce our upcoming collaboration with the incredible world of Ravenswatch, arriving next week! [/p][p][/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p][/p][h3]New Echoes[/h3][p]The heroes of Reverie join the Garden to support the fight against the Master as 5 powerful new Echoes. We’ve always been fans of Passtech Games, and adding Ravenswatch to our list of collabs is another very nice milestone for us.[/p][p][/p][h3]New Special Room: The Hourglass of Dreams[/h3][p]With this update, we’re also introducing a mystical new space: The Hourglass of Dreams, also inspired by the Ravenswatch universe, with a new mechanic for gambits! [/p][p][/p][p]We'll keep some suspense for now, but keep an eye on our Discord channel and on our socials to get sneak peeks of the upcoming content over the next few days! [/p][p][/p][h3]Mark your calendars for the 19th. The watch begins soon![/h3][p]
[/p]