Astral Ascent News

⭐Changes inspired by our community!

[h2]Small Features[/h2]

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• community inspired ⭐ Pavo's Feathers from Void Catalyst improvement are now further in Intro Rooms so you don't miss them
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• community inspired ⭐ Andromeda's Challenges now give drink for both players in co-op
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• Life Crusher - Does not decrease player max life when taking damage on Pavo's ruins anymore.
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• We added back the Sun pieces multiplier triggered by increasing Destiny Level in NG+ runs.
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• World 2 Magma Golem Destiny Level explosion attack would keep hitting after a long time preventing player to go back hitting the golem
  

[h2]Balancing[/h2]

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• Curse of the Blacksmith - Negative Gambits on spells went from -50% to -30% damage and from 50% chances per tier to 25% chances per tier
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• Used Pockets - from -10 quartz per tier to -5
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• Inflation : from +25% per tier of Itinerant Peddler items prices to +15% per tier
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• Shield Foes - Enemies now have 50% chances to have Armor instead of 100% and Spawned monsters by Wooden Guardian and Giant Snake can never have armor points
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• Wooden Guardian laser shoots delay is slightly more important in Destiny Level 1+
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• Harassing Foes - From 30% chances per tier to 8% chances per tier and duration from 8 secs to 6 secs
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• Vampiric Foes - from 20% per tier for regular enemies to 10%
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• Thorny Foes - From 10% per tier to 2% and timer between Thorns on enemies from 3 secs to 6 secs
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• Vengeful Foes - From 10% per tier to 2% and timer between Dark Missiles on enemies from 3 secs to 6 secs
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• Increase all heroes basic attacks base damage and fall attack base damage for better scaling
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• Spirit friends - Added one more stack to enable 1 additional Echo on start of a run and balanced prices. This ability should also assign different echo for players during co-op.
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• community inspired ⭐ It's possible to salvage loots from Yalee Kingdom now
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• Random Echos in Void Catalyst from 1 tier at 30 to 2 tiers at 10 and 20
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• First Strike from Void Catalyst from +200% dmg to full life enemies to +300%
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• community inspired ⭐ Added a bit more time for Sagittarius to attack after her DL 6 attack
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• community inspired ⭐ Leo DL6 Spin Attack jump jump height has been reduced and now requires players to be further than before
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• Sixth Sense - from +50% to +100% to Critical Damage
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• Shadow Clones - This malice should not cause spawn of clones too on early in runs or worlds.
  

[h2]Level Design[/h2]

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• Removed 2 jumping crystals from an Exploration room that were conflicting with fights
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• Removed a spawn area that conflicted with jump crystals
  

[h2]Interface[/h2]

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• Changed ""Activate"" to ""Beat"" in Path of Destinies interface for locked elements for less confusion
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• Smoothed some Void Catalyst text descriptions
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• Barbecue UI description would become invisible if you move to right while on most right element (same for all directions)
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• There is now a input to completely reset all currencies committed in the Void Catalyst.
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

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• community inspired ⭐ Oloon Shield had a typo
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• community inspired ⭐ Removed FX from Void Catalyst that could be causing FPS drop for some players
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• community inspired ⭐ Being hit while being invincible (shield for example) during a Zodiac fight will consider you did not perfect the boss and deny the achievement
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• Apparition Sound of Shadow Clones was not playing
  

- The Hibernian Workshop Team

• Discord Server
• Twitter Account
• Official Store

This new Update is a game changer for late game experience and we are super excited to finally make it available for everyone to play!

Full Patch-Notes of 0.45
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1280930/view/3681178469567255745

This Update adds more than 150h to the game for those wanting more challenges and it keeps the progression you made in previous Early Access version! There is a lot to share and won't be able to cover everything in this News post but here are the main things you may want to know -


We released Astral Ascent in Early Access back in April 2022 (feels like forever ago...) with a system named the Path of Destinies allowing you to keep playing the game with an increasing difficulty. Everytime you would defeat a Zodiac in a difficulty you didn't defeat them in yet, you would receive a Destiny Fragment, an unique currency that would not allow you to buy anything and the maximum Destiny Level was 12, at each level you would need to select from 1 to 3 maluses and keep going as much as you could.

Basically only a few very talented players succeed to beat Destiny Level 12 with only motivation to overcome a very hard difficulty (and to get a bit more Sun Pieces to spend in Zim-Zim shop).

Path of Destinies rework main objectives were :

• Interesting - each element has to have an interesting effect
  
• Easy to understand
  
• Accessible start
  
• Hard end
  

You now have 54 Destiny Levels instead of 12, you need to success (beat Libra or Aquarius for now) the 6 first Destiny Level to progress to next one. The 6 first ones being :

• Destiny Level 1 -
  
• Destiny Level 2 -
  
  
• Destiny Level 3 -
  
• Destiny Level 4 -
  
• Destiny Level 5 -
  
• Destiny Level 6 -
  

Once you suceed to beat Destiny Level 6, you can freely increase the Destiny Level as much as you want up to Level 54 (Do not worry, you can lower your Destiny Level anytime!) with many elements to choose from -


This is how Destiny Fragments loot works, each Zodiac owns 1 Destiny Fragment per Destiny Level, Master of the prison owns 3 per Destiny Level (available on final release).


With the 54 Destiny Levels it means you can find 810 Destiny Fragments(12*54 + 3*54) and we offer an additional 10 when you success a run for the first time so, on final version you could get a total of 820 Destiny Fragments, maximum 486 on current version. The way it works is that if you beat a Zodiac at a Destiny Level, you will unlock their Destiny Fragment of the the lowest Destiny Level available.

For example, you are Destiny Level 10 and you already have collected 4 Taurus Destiny Fragments - you could beat Taurus 6 times at Destiny Level 10 and still get new Destiny Fragments but then it would stop. Also, if you have Zodiacs that have no Destiny Fragments available for you, game in Destiny Levels will always prioritize making you face Zodiacs you can get Destiny Fragments from.

We would still recommend to increase slowly Destiny Level so you can collect Destiny Fragments and improve your Void Catalyst (explained lower).
Additionally, in the top part of the Path of Destinies, you can see this -


Each Destiny Level increase the Damage, Max HP of Enemies and Zodiacs. At NG+6 they reach +30%, including the +20% of NG+4. From then it will keep increasing faster, at NG+54 you will have:

• Enemies +150% Damage
  
• Enemies +200% Max Life
  
• Zodiacs +300% Damage
  
• Zodiacs +300% Max Life
  

It looks really hard (even more with all additional maluses) and you may not really be sure of the point of putting yourself in such a bad situation but do not worry, both of these questions get answers in a brand new major system you can see below!


This system is completely new and it will allow you to use the Destiny Fragments you collect during your Destiny Levels runs. This system is mainly linked to Final Boss - the Master of the Prison but for now we made it spoiler-free and you only need to defeat Libra or Aquarius once to trigger a quest to activate it.


The way we see it is really : Path of Destinies starts the Chapter 2 of the game, everything will be more intense, you will unlock many things and narrative true endings will also happen during higher Destiny Levels through the Master of the Prison final confrontations.

Once activated you can open the Void Catalyst interface, you start with 10 Destiny Fragments and you will need the 820 fragments to have everything maxed out and these upgrades are going to make you so much more powerful and make you change your playstyle too - you can even have different playstyle registered as presets!

In final version the Master of the Prison will give you 3 Destiny Fragment per level so a succesful run will give you 7 fragments while you will only get 4 for now, it may feel like the Void Catalyst progression to be a bit slower in this version for now.

When you start only one row is available and the more you progress in Destiny Levels the more rows you unlock and you can freely reset your points and attribute them again.


You have a lot of elements you can improve and you can check all of your improvements from Void Catalyst anytime in a new menu from from pause menu, it also displays the Destiny Levels and elements you selected from Path of Destinies -


You can choose from 24 different bonuses to upgrade in the Void Catalyst, we cannot show all of them here so let us show you a few interesting ones -


One goal we had in mind for the Void Catalyst was giving you some elements to fluidity/smooth your runs, that is the case for extra damage on full life enemies but also the possibility to reset Itinerant Merchant choises, increase the number of use of the Aura Upgrader or even get keys by defeating Zodiacs for example.


Last but not least, Zim-Zim has been reworked too. She now has more upgrades and a few old ones were removed.


Let's focus on a few of the new elements -



We have also improved a lot of things all around like UI elements in the Prowess Tree.


We have also re-activated the Spell Altar by popular request.


Created new Altar for Gambits.


That's it for this update, whole team has so much fun playing this update and we hope you will also have fun doing so and we are genuinely curious of how high you will be able to go in the Destiny Levels! We are sure there is balancing left to do so we would be very happy to have your feedback about it too.

Next Update should be mid August and it should add more content to the game and polish many systems that are still requiring our attention.

As always, thanks so much for following us and do not hesitate to share the game if you like it!

Have a great day and upcoming week-end,

- The Hibernian Workshop Team

⭐Changes inspired by our community!

[h2]Major Features[/h2]

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• New Botanist abilities: Reworked and added new abilities for The botanist:
  - Magical gift: Increase spell choices by the intro room and telluric ruins by +1 per tier.
  - Expert breaker: Increase Quartz gained by salvaging a spell or gambit by +10% per tier.
  - Star breaker: Increase Stars gained by salvaging an aura by +1 per tier.
  - Feather leftovers: When Salvaging a spell, you have 5% chances per tier to make a pavo's feather appear. you also gain an additional +5% to proc this effect for each gambit applied to the salvaged spell.
  - Gambit Rarity up: Increase chances to transform common gambit into rare gambits by +5% per tier.
  - Aura Rarity up: increase chances to transform common aura into rare aura by +5% per tier.
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• The Void Catalyst: We added a new system linked to Path of Destinies that will enable players to unlock new abilities at exchange of destiny fragments.
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• Path of Destinies: Reworked the Path of Destinies system, starting by revamping the UI for better user experience. We added new game modifiers and removed some old ones. The game has now 54 extra levels of difficulty and defeating Zodiacs on high Destiny Level will reward the players with Destiny Fragments, which can be used in the Void Catalyst to unlock new abilities.
  
  here are the first 6 new challenges you'll have to face in Destiny Level:
  - Enemies all gain new or improved attack patterns (Except for Zodiacs).
  - Increase the minimum difficulty of rooms by +2 stars.
  - New Shadow Clones enemies will start appearing during your journey.
  - All enemies and Zodiacs gain +20% Health and damages.
  - Increase Elite enemies spawning chances by 100%.
  - Zodiacs release their full potential, gaining improved and new attacks patterns, the challenge begins here.
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• Added a new option in the pause menu that can be accessed after unlocking Path of Destinies which has info about active Path of Destinies modifiers (current destiny level and difficulty modifiers) and active abilities from Void Catalyst.
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• Armor Points: They are now absorbing 3% damage per stone up to 70% maximum (instead of reducing damage received by 1 per stone)
  

[h2]Small Features[/h2]

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• Polished the spawn of destiny fragments after defeating Zodiacs, they do not prevent Zodiac Chests to spawn and they will follow you faster
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• community inspired ⭐ Spell and Gambit altars: We re-enabled spell altars and added a new gambit altar. These should make finding spell and spell modifiers more common during runs.
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• community inspired ⭐ Adjusted zoom level on sun/moon room to make loot description better to read.
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• Changed some rooms progress/unlock condition
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• Kiran basic attack range and visual improvement
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• Increased spawn speed of Zodiac chests
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• Changed color order of Spells loot, highest rarity is now pink as it is for Gambits and Auras (Astral)
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• ""Absorbed"" was sometimes wrongly display, for example when being killed after Libra/Aquarius
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• Octave drone shoots faster its first missiles
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• World 4 shielded enemy is not invincible anymore during its attack
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• World 4 flying enemy projectile does not follow player anymore while not in Destiny Level
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• Many small changes of Zodiacs patterns
  

[h2]Balancing[/h2]

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• Spells speed cast improvement: Increased Spell cast of following spells
  
  Kiran
  - Ultra Loaded Knuckles
  - Energy Projectiles
  - Windturner Up Slash
  - Void Punch
  
  Calie
  - Stone of the Ancients
  - Prismatic Beam
  - Azurite Falchion
  
  Octave
  - Sol
  - Sagitta
  - Fax
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• Balanced Elite Aspects number per world
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• Buffed Aquarius summon damage
  

[h2]Level Design[/h2]

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• Playing the game on Path of Destinies adds subtle visual changes in the game levels.
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• Removed some jump crystals conflicting with fight areas
  

[h2]Music & SFX[/h2]

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• Added Sound for Destiny Fragment
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• Added Sound for Taurus summon slash
  

[h2]Interface[/h2]

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• Darker Pause menu background
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• Talent tree UI visuals improvement
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• Improved Achievement message UI
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• Improved Sier Bapy and Papa Yalee UI clarity
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• Improved display of damage from level and affinity on spells
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• Added bilinear on some UI icons
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• Sier Bapy completed achievement have a different background now
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• Prevented pausing the game during Menus,Talent tree and similar situations
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• Pavo's Feathers mentioned Gambits when equipping them
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• Spell affinity to Neutral for Elemental Gambits description improvement
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• Updated Dev Message
  

[h2]Visuals[/h2]

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• Improved rarity icon and added on common rarity
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• Improvement of many text fonts for clarity, mainly for numbers
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• Improved most loots UI display, changing colors for different loots, increase spaces etc
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• Added Echoes icon when interface picking them up
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• Uniformized many titles and text displays
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• Reduced many flash intensity, for example when picking a Memory Fragment
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• Improved font readability and size of damage to enemies and received
  

[h2]Narrative Design[/h2]

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• Oloon shield description was using wrong term
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• community inspired ⭐ Octave text would mention {oloon}
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• Yalee Madness description was not mentioning amount of Yalees spawned
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

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• community inspired ⭐ Aquarius could catch player while being revived by Ikki
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• Critic icon next to critic hit text now always stays, it used to disappear very fast
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• community inspired ⭐ Poison chain from Astral Aura could focus invincible ghosts
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• Elite lifebar would remain visible after failing a Zodiac challenge fight
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• Caedes spell of Octave was hitting only 1 time instead of 3
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• Clones spawned by Elite Aspect would have aggro and could, for Wild Grass for example, teleport on you from the start of a room
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• community inspired ⭐ Capricorn's books could spawn Thorns from Path of Destinies while being destroyed
  

- The Hibernian Workshop Team

• Discord Server
• Twitter Account
• Official Store

Hello everyone!

We released Colors & Elite Update on May 1st and next Major Update will be released at the end of June and today we want to share with you what this Update is going to be about.


As you probably already know, we like to re-work things and this time it is turn for the Path of Destinies (New Game + System).

CURRENT SYSTEM

Current System required you to collect Destiny Fragments by defeating Zodiacs and you needed a certain amount of Destiny Fragment to get to next Destiny Level.

You could only take one Malus per row then you would automatically to next row so it was always picking among few Maluses, there was a total of 12 Destiny levels and no purpose to collect Destiny Fragments except making the game more difficult if you want challenges.

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NEW SYSTEM

mockup, still in progress

New System is a simplified version of existing system, base is the same - defeat Zodiacs to collect Destiny Fragments (you will still have Destiny Fragments you collected before the Update) but now the Destiny Levels are fix from 1 to 6, you do not have to choose your Maluses until Destiny Level 7 because the 6 first Destiny Levels will be enabling a renewed game experience, a phase 2 of the game.

• Enemies will have new or improved attacks
  
  
• Bosses will have new or improved attacks
  
  
• And other things...

These elements will mainly increase and change experience of the 2 first worlds that you know just too well at this point but all worlds/zodiacs will be affected. We want Path of Destinies experience to make first worlds as interesting as last ones.

Before Destiny Level 7 you will need to unlock Destiny Levels one by one by finishing the game but from Destiny Level 7 or more you can pick as many Maluses as you want in any order and some Maluses will have several levels for a total of more than 50 Destiny Levels. It will be up to you to decide in which order and how many maluses you want, we would recommend optimizing the Destiny Fragments gain and here is why -



A new piece of the story named the Void Catalyst will now be in the Garden, it will only be accessible once you defeat Libra (for now).


When using it you will access the system below -


mockup, still in progress

From there you will really be entering phase 2 of the game as your new goal will to collect as many Destiny Fragments as possible by defeating Zodiacs in higher and higher Destiny Levels to get really big power boosts, there is 24 power-ups to discover with from 1 to 5 levels each and you unlock them with more Destiny Fragments collected!

Some elements from Void Catalyst -

• Start runs with Ikki Summon
  
• First Andromeda's drink is free
  
• Increase your Healing Shards power
  
• Start with base Armor
  
• etc.
  

So, even if you feel stuck at one Destiny Level you will keep collecting Destiny Fragments on Zodiacs and keep getting stronger. This is made to encourage you going into harder difficulties, in particular Destiny Level 6 because that's when you will reach True End once we reach 1.0 release.

The Void Catalyst also comes with Presets so you can create several builds that are saved and you can reset it at any time for free.

All of these systems are already implemented but it will take a lot of time to playtest and balance. We do not want things to be too complicated too quickly or to feel discouraging.

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At the same time we are making progress on Final Boss encounter and it is going to be by far our biggest work in the game, we want to the Master of the Prison to be a memorable game boss.

We hope you are as excited as we are for this upcoming Update that will be completely renewing end-game experience.

Have a great day and upcoming week-end,

- The Hibernian Workshop Team

So... last time we announced this Update to be ready by May 15 but we are actually ahead of our plannings so the Update is live... now for you to play! Including -

0.44 Steam Patch Notes - https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1280930/view/3699187161343049277



[h2]Elites rework [/h2]
We have reworked all existing elite modifiers and added many new ones for a total of 13 Elite modifiers now including passive elements like Armor and Regeneration too.



Among the reworked elements we improved the rotating lasers as we knew many of you had issues with them and we completely removed the modifiers making nearby enemies invincible.



There are even 2 modifiers happening on Death of enemies so be careful about icons! (Do not worry we made sure these elements could not happen in Eclipse Room so you can enjoy you Eclipse Room victories peacefully!)
The spawn rates and amount of modifiers has changed a little and we hope you will enjoy these new encounters!

[h2]New room type - Eclipse Room[/h2]
Talking about Elites, we created a new room dedicated to them : the Eclipse Room, this room gives you more Keys & more Stars than any Fight Room but it is also a much harder battle.



These rooms have 3 waves and at least 3 Elites in them, they also have traps. It can be very dangerous but you can also take advantage of it by exposing enemies to the traps!



As Eclipse Room is for experienced players, you will need to defeat a world 4 boss (Libra or Aquarius) before being able to get them in your runs.



[h2]Oloon extended[/h2]
As you saw, Oloon is the face of this new update and we made quite a lot of changes there! It used to be very complicated to have style with old colors, they were too flashy, complicated to match and there was not enough of them.
That's why we added many new colors AND a new category of colors.

• Ayla pants
  
• Kiran shoes & belt
  
• Octave boots & belt
  
• Calie pants
  

New colors are way more natural and allow for much more variations. Oloon is pleased of your style and we hope you will be too! It will now require 144 Yalee tickets to get all colors!



[h2]Sun Room Rework[/h2]
Another major rework from this update is about Sun Room. When you arrive you will be asked to choose among all elemental affinities we have in the game.



Then one gambit for each sub category of the elemental affinity will be spawned. These gambits are special, we have created a new type of gambit named Elemental Gambit that allows you to change a spell affinity to the affinity of this gambit.



To sum up how things work : when you go to the Sun room you are guaranteed to have any sub-category Gambit you could want as Myhic quality. If you want to build Sapling you can get a Mythic Sapling gambit there and this gambit will also change your spell affinity to Poison.
What it means is that you can find nice Fire gambits and start equiping them on a spell that is not of Fire affinity and then later change the affinity of this spell to Fire in the Sun room.



Regarding the elemental affinities we have also made a change, Neutrals affinity used to work with any types of gambits but they are now only working with gambits that are not from the 4 main elements.
The bonus damage for having 4 of the same gambits in the right affinity spell has also changed from +100% to +50%.



[h2]Many new Perks for heroes[/h2]
With all the new effects we introduced in last update we did not have time to add perks related to all of them (Ice Swords, Meteors etc).



By adding these new perks we have also reworked and added some other perks for this update. For example, Octave can now summon several Bellators at once but they will be on self-destruction mode.



Heroes Signature Spells should now be a more reliable way to trigger synergies by equipping perks.



[h2]Debug and QoL changes[/h2]
We have also addressed many bugs reports and added some quality of life changes that you requested such as being able to preview Auras upgrade anytime from loots and from inventory.




[h2]What is coming with next update?[/h2]
This update is smaller than Auras update but it is also smaller than next update that will be about Zim-Zim and NG+!
We are going to fully rework the NG+ system, adding way more elements and a different progression system making Destiny Levels a part of global runs experience and giving real incentives to collect Destiny Fragments from Zodiacs.




Everything is designed but there is a lot to do, you can expect this Update to release in second part of June!

As always, thanks a lot for supporting us through this journey and let us know if you enjoy this update or if you want to share the best Oloon color changes outfit you made!

Have a great week,

- The Hibernian Workshop Team