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Across the Obelisk News

One year of Early Access

Hello everyone!

Today marks one year since the release of Across the Obelisk on Steam Early Access.

We want to celebrate and thank you all! So, we'll do a little recap of this year and then we'll talk about what we're working on and what's to come!

The first days
We released the game on April 8 2021. The first few days were moderately quiet... but the next week, weekend and month, it was crazy for us.

Making and releasing a game by itself is not an easy task, but if the game has multiplayer... the problems multiply a thousand times. With only two of us (plus friends and family) testing the game online, it was difficult to find all the possible problems that could come up. So, as more and more players started to join the game, bugs started popping up all the time. We were practically releasing one patch a day for a few weeks (sometimes even two patches on the same day), as soon as people reported something to us on discord and we could reproduce/fix it we preferred to release a patch without waiting, so they could keep playing.

The truth is that it is something that we will always remember, for the bad, but also for the good. It was a pleasure to see you play and enjoy the game we had created.

Content added in one year.
During this year we have worked hard to improve all aspects of the game. We have recently added Act 4 and we are still in the process of balancing it. These are some of the things we have added during the year:
- As mentioned, Act 4 has been added with 2 floors, many new events, enemies, bosses and items.
- 2 New heroes, Wilbur and Nezglekt.
- 2 new game modes, Obelisk Challenge and Weekly challenge.
- Obelisk Challenge has been evolving and improving during the year, with content, features and more variety of events / enemies.
- Madness levels, expanding the game with 16 levels of difficulty.
- Redone nearly all the art of the game, including a pass on the first heroes, all backgrounds, UI, card design, etc.
- Improved and redone the Trait system.
- Different Skins and Cardbacks for each hero.
- Improved the Tome of Knowledge with lots of new features, f.e. run history and scoreboards.
- And we've added as many quality of life and player-requested features as possible.

The community
We have said it over and over again, and we will not be tired of repeating it. We are very grateful to our community, especially to all those who help us and give us feedback day after day in our Discord and forums.

This game wouldn't be the same without you, so again, thank you very much!

What's next?
Our goal is to continue working on the game and improve it even more. Specifically, we are starting to make a new biome/map (with all that it entails: nodes, paths, events, enemies, bosses, etc). This biome is cold based and will be one more option to choose after finishing Act 1 and 2 (with Velkarath and Aquarfall).

We have started designing and implementing the remaining four heroes. They are still works in progress, but here they are.

A big shout out to Juan José Nicolás, our magnificent artist. Just with the sketches alone we can't wait to have the final version of the heroes! These heroes are still a few months away from being live.

In the meantime here are some other things we want to work on:
- We want to implement a Heropedia in the Tome, with a small story unlock feature for each hero.
- The Monsterpedia is also on the way, although it's more complicated than it seems :)
- We have pending a rework to the Weekly Challenge, the idea is to make them different and have a couple of features that change the gameplay a bit (with some cosmetic rewards).
- Rework of the perks system. We want to try to improve it and not add more power than the heroes already have, but give them more options to specialize, even in damage types or curses that are uncommon in their class.
- As we said before, the game will be translated to some languages for 1.0, and that includes an english proof reading. As you may have noticed, English is not our main language, so forgive us for the usual spelling mistakes in the game (that we try to fix everyday thanks to the players that report those mistakes) that will soon be a thing from the past.
- And some more things that we will keep secret ;)

To conclude
It has been a very good year, and we are very excited to continue working on the game.

The basic idea is that we can release the game when we have the ice biome and the 4 remaining heroes ready. We hope it will be around late summer but you never know.

Of course, releasing the game doesn't mean that we will stop working on it, the idea is to continue as we have been doing and make many more biomes / cards / heroes / events / enemies and bosses!

Remember to leave a review on steam, if you like the game, it helps us a lot.

Who knows where we will be next year! We hope you will stay with us to find out.

Adam and Javier.

Patch v.0.8.2 More Balance changes.

Hello everyone!
This patch continues with changes to improve the game balance and Act 4, as well as adding new QoL and new art for the towns.

New Features:

Each town in the game has new art and a specific background for each town. In addition, each building has three visual upgrade levels, which are displayed when you purchase upgrades in the Town Upgrades.



In our crusade to improve the usability and clarity of the game, we have implemented a pop-up on the health bar that will show you the pre-turn and post-turn damage received.
The health bar will now show 3 new states with 3 different colors.
- The dark red shows all damage received at the start of the turn. (bleed, burn, others)
- If you will gain life instead of suffer damage at the start of the turn, the bar will be yellow/cream. (due to regeneration or others)
- A dark green bar shows the damage you will receive at the end of the turn. (poison, others)
In addition to this pop-up, a skull icon will be displayed. This shows up in the center of the health bar when a hero/monster is predicted to die at the beginning or end of their turn due to curses.



Note: keep in mind that even if you see a skull on a hero/enemy, it does not assure that they will 100% die. Other heroes/monsters can influence and vary that result (with heals or dispels for example) before their turn.


Hero changes:

- Thuls: Veil of Shadows - Now you can use "Skill" or "Enchantment" cards without losing Stealth. (Twice per turn)
- Reginald/Ottis: Reverberation - Now reduces the highest cost "Holy Spell" in your hand by 3 until discarded. (Twice per turn)
- Malukah: Yin Ritual - Now grants Regeneration to all heroes when applying Dark.
- Cornelius: World in Flames (yellow) - Reduced uses to 3. (from 4)
- Heiner: Shield Expert - Changed to when you play an "Attack" instead of a "Melee Attack".
- Warriors: Tireless - Now makes them immune to Fatigue.

We have changed some cards to have both "Defense" and "Skill" tags to open more possibilities of builds and combos with talents and items (existing and future). This also means that these cards will be valid for events that require that kind of roll types.
- Warrior: Barbed Wire, Garden of Thorns, Push Forward(also changed to rare), Sharing is Caring.
- Scout: Caltrops, Deflect, Disengage, Feint, Parry, Stoneskin.
- Mage: Elemental Ward, Icy Veins, Mana Shield, Prismatic Shield.
- Healer: Anthem of Hope, Infuse Courage.
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- Bouncing Shield & Shield Throw - removed the "Melee Attack" tag.
- Throw Bolas & Torment of Thorns - changed to "Ranged Attack" and "Skill".
- Blood Feeding - changed to "Melee Attack" (from Skill).
- Fan of Knives - now is "Melee Attack" and "Ranged attack".
- Ice Barrier & Scroll of Defense - added "Defense" tag.
---------
- Reduced the damage of Torment of Thorns (blue) to x1(from 1.5) and (yellow) to x0.6(from 1).
- Changed Last Reward (Yellow & Corrupt) - now you can pick a card from your vanish pile.
- Plague Shot - base cost reduced to 2(from 3), tweaked some numbers on all versions.
- Whispering lies - now requires Stanza but does Mind/Shadow and applies Insane/Dark/Decay.
- Rain (Yellow) - reduced charges to 1, but now is global with no vanish.
- Celestial Brillance - reduced damage but added Purge.
- Divine Ire - changed to deal damage based on Sanctify and increased cost.
- Radiant Assault (yellow) - changed to cost 5, random target, but added damage sides.
- Omen of Peril - upgrades are better but epic rarity. yellow upgrade lets you pick a "Healing Spell" from your vanish pile.

Minor changes of +-1 charges on a few other card upgrades.


General balance changes:

- Revised and adjusted the speed of almost all enemies, especially those that had the same speed in normal mode than in madness. In general, the adjustment has been downwards. As a result, some monsters should be a little slower than before(especially in Act 1 and Act 3).
- Reduced the max speed bonus gain of monsters in high madness levels to +2 (from +3) in Act 3 & 4.
Note: In general, the speed of monsters should be a little slower than before, and players should feel less forced to always have a super fast hero in the party.

- Slightly adjusted downwards the damage and charges of some Act 1 enemies in madeness (also affects Obelisk 9-10 first floor).
- In Obelisk/Weekly Challenge, adjusted the overall mitigation (HP, Block, Shield, Regen, Heal, etc.) of monsters on the third floor.
- In the Obelisk Challenge, a starting Energy bonus of +1 has been added at Obelisk level 5. Making a total of +2 from Obelisk level 8 onwards.

Added the "Despair" versions for Act 1, Champions and Bosses. Some of them have only minor changes in the cards, but others have new Enchantments that will make them more interesting.
Note: The "Despair" corruptor is the most difficult optional corruptor in the game, turning the game into an extra hard mode. The intention is to make it difficult, but not impossible. It will have to be balanced over time and when new Champions or changes happen, it is normal that they can be OP/unfair at the beginning.


Monster changes:

Minor adjustments in damage, heal done and Regeneration charges of some monsters and champions.

Lancers:
Holy Lance & Shadow Lance - Piercing damage is now based on Vitality(from a previous fixed amount), they will do less damage if they didn't steal any Vitality from the heroes. Also, now Holy Lance & Shadow Lance will Purge their own Vitality after used.

Balance patch v0.8.1

Hello everyone, this patch balances the newly released Act 4, and adds some extra features.

IMPORTANT: due to the long list of changes that this patch brings to the balance of the game, ongoing games from version 0.8.01 are incompatible with this patch so if you want to continue playing your old games you will need to use the early version of the game (v0.8.01) that's available through the Steam client. We are sorry, but it is a change that had to be made and we could not avoid it.

Last week we released Act 4 of the game and in general we are very happy with the result. We have been collecting all the feedback you have been giving us and we have been working quickly to improve and balance Act 4 as fast as possible.

So, we agree that Act 4 came out a bit Overtuned, especially in normal mode and the last boss.

During the Act 4 beta we got a lot of good feedback from very committed and experienced players (we are very grateful to all of you). Most of the feedback was about high madness levels and more advanced aspects, so we probably understimate the difficulty of the game in normal mode.

But well, that's what Early Access is for, to correct and improve the game whenever possible, so here's a summary of what we've done.

We have lowered the general difficulty of Act 4, especially in normal mode and a little less in madness mode. We have reduced the life of all enemies by 10-15% and revised their enchantments. Lord Hanshek's shadows will take much more health when using their cosume card, heal/area dispel (effectively reducing their health with each use). Archon Nhir has been lowered several values and damage based on auras/curses, plus he will no longer evade. There are many more changes (full list of changes at the end).

We have made some visual improvements to the Act 4 map, now that we know exactly what events are in each node and to give it more personality. We wanted to say that the Act 4 map was created before the random mode, when we had the map done we decided to create many more islands so we could create maps for the random mode "Obelisk Challenge". As the community (and us too) had a lot of desire to have a random mode in the game, we decided to advance it and release it before, so now it seems that Act 4 comes from the obelisk mode, when it is exactly the other way around. Even so, we have decided to improve it graphically and little by little we will add some more content.

Also four new cardbacks have been added to the game, which will be unlocked by passing various game modes, some of them (adventure complete in madness 14) will have to be replayed for the unlock to take effect. We have also improved the cardback display in several places in the game.

Talking about madness, we have given an overview of the corruptors in madness mode and sorted them by difficulty, to make it clearer for everyone.

The "Elite Champions" corruptor has been merged with the "Random Combats" corruptor, now there will always be a champion in each combat, with a random immunity but without the powerful bonus at the start of the combat.

Now, in the adventure, even with the Random combats corruptor you will be able to see which enemies are in each combat on the path, so you can plan your route. This is only for the adventure mode.

New corruptor "Despair", due to the balance and lower difficulty of the enemies in madness, we have created this corruptor to put certain enemies/champions/bosses at a higher difficulty level (nearly the same before the patch) by improving their cards and enchantment. At the moment this corruptor only affects act 4 enemies, but with time we will apply changes to the other enemies/bosses.

Thanks to this new optional corruptor, it allows us to have a new level of difficulty. Being in practice 3 base levels: normal, madness and madness+despair. So, for all those who still want more challenge or think that the changes have been excessive, we have a new difficulty level where we can create really difficult encounters.

Full list of changes and fixes.

Talents
Voltaic Arc: Added +1 spark charges.

Enchantments
World in Flames: this enchant caused soem problems as the card was casted when the enchant triggered and was an aoe card, changed to add the special emberstorm in you hand at cost 0 and vanish.
The Chosen One: Reduced sight and vulnerable charges by 1.

Cards
Meditate: (yellow) reduced energy to 1(from 2) added 1 energyze.
Meteorite: (Blue) increased damage a bit. (Yellow) removed random monster, increased cost and damage.
Ice comet: (Blue) increased chill. (Yellow) removed random monster, increased cost, added blunt damage and crack.
Ball lightning: (Blue) increased cost to 9, increased damage and spark charges.
Vampiric Tutor: (Blue) reduced cost to 1, increased hp lost.
Living Flame: (Blue) increased cost to 3, added 1 more jump and increased burn to 3.
Mind Visions: (Yellow) added vanish.
Pandemonium: (Blue) removed vanish. (Yellow) increased cost to 6, reduced damage, removed slow, added repeat 1.
Death's Reach: (Blue) increased cost to 8, added repeat 1. (Yellow) increased damage a bit.

Items
Scryer Staff: reduced the sight:burn conversion to 1:2(from 1:3)
Spider Queen Eye: reduced the sight:poison conversion to 1:2(from 1:3)

Act 4 changes
Reduced the hit points of all normal enemies in Act 4 (normal & madness) by 10%-15%.
All changes to Act 4 enemies also apply to those enemies in obelisk mode.

Vanguard & Dark Vanguard
Sacred Rancor / Dark Rancor (enchants): reduced the damage back done when damaged.
Holy Slash / Shadow Slash: reduced damage and sanctify/dark charges respectively.
Desvastate: reduced damage.
Bloody Retaliation: Damage based from bleed reduced to x0.5(from 1) in normal and x1(from 1.5) in madness mode.
Toxic Retaliation: Damage based from poison reduced to x0.5(from 1) in normal and x1(from 1.5) in madness mode.

Gunner & Dark Gunner
Heavy Artillery (enchant): reduced damage bonus and mark charges to 1(from 2), reduced uses to 10(from 12), in madness reduced uses to 10 too.
Sacred Shot / Dark Shot: reduced damage and sanctify/dark charges respectively.
Holy Barrage / Shadow Barrage: reduced damage.
Radiant Burst / Gloomy Burst: significantly reduced base damage, keep the x1(x2 in madness) damge based on cards in the discard pile.
Luminous Beam: Reduced the sharp to bleed conversion to 0.5(from 1) in normal and 0.8(from 1) in madness, also reduced the vulnerable charges by 1.
Caustic Beam: Reduced the sharp to poison conversion to 0.5(from 1) in normal and 0.8(from 1) in madness, also reduced the vulnerable charges by 1.

Oddball
Shield Generator (enchant): Reduced a bit the shield and block generated, charges reduced to 2(from 3) in normal mode.
Shield Jammer: Shield reducction reduced to x0.5(from 0.7), reduced vulnerable charges by 1.

Lancer & Dark Lancer
Pulsing Vigor (enchant): Reduced the vitality charges granted to 2(from 3) in normal and to 3(from 4) in madness mode.
Vitality Drain: Vitality gained equals x0.5(from 1) your vitality in normal mode, in madness keeps the x1 your vitality but removed the extra +X damage based on the vitality stolen.
Piercing Strike, holy & shadow versions: reduced the damage and charges (vulnerable, sanctify, dark) by 1 in all the versions.
Oppression, holy & shadow versions: reduced the damage based on hero thorns to x0.5(from 1) in normal mode.
Holy Lance / Shadow Lance: reduced the base damage a bit, damage based on monster vitality reduced to x0.5(from 1) in normal mode.

Champion Lancelot was affected by these changes and his cards were adjusted accordingly.

Monk & Dark Monk
Yang Mantra / Yin Mantra (enchants): Reduced the sanctify/dark charges applied by 1 in normal mode.
Payback: increased damage a bit, reduced the curses transfered to 1(from 3) in normal and to 2(from 4) in madness mode.
Radiance / Gravity Well: Greatly reduced the area damage based on block to x0.20(from 0.4) in normal and to x0.25(from 0.45) in madness, increased the burn/dark charges applied a bit respectively.
Transcendence: Removed dispel in normal and reduced the dispel to 1(from 2) in madness mode.
Celestial Toll / Death's Toll: Reduced base damage a bit, in madness the card added (Deadly Chime, Divine Chime) now has vanish.

Champion Graham was affected by these changes and his cards were adjusted accordingly.

Psychic
Silent Backlash (enchant): Reduced uses to 1(from 2) in normal mode, also reduced the damage a bit. Madness stays with 2 uses.
Dementia: Reduced damage a bit, and Amnesia (added card) has vanish.
Mass Hysteria: reduced damage and charges applied.
Phantom Echoes: Reduced jumps to 1(from 2) in normal mode.
Enfeeble: Reduced charges applied.

Knight / Dark Knight
Perfect Parry (enchant): Reduced uses to 1(from 3) in normal and to 2 (from 3) in madness mode.
Knights's Pride: Reduced damage and damage based on evasion charges.
Grand Cross, holy & shadow versions: Reduced the damage and damgesides a bit 1 in all the versions.
Godly Strength: Gain bless based on the monster sanctify charges x0.5 in normal and x0.8 in madness mode, also reduced the power charges by 1.
UnGodly Stength: Changed to be like Godly Strenght but it works with monster dark charges.
Stronghold: Reduced block to 70(from 80) in normal and to 85(from 90) in madness mode.

Champion Guts was affected by these changes and his cards were adjusted accordingly.

Angel / Dark Angel
Divine Protection (enchant): Now triggers at 10%(from 15%) in normal and at 15%(from 20%) in madness, also reduced the bless charges to 7(from 9).
Celestial Wrath (enchant): Now grants powerful instead of bless when triggered, reduced damage to 28(from 36) in normal and sanctify charges applied by 2.
Abyssal Wrath (enchant): Reduced damage to 28(from 36) in normal and dark charges applied by 2.
Blasphemy / Heresy: Reduced the base damage.
Purify: Reduced dispel to 2(from 3) in normal and to 3(from 4) at madness mode.
Sacred Ceremony: reduce the bless granted to 2(from 3) in normal.
Sanctuary: reduced the vitality granted to 2(from 3) in normal and to 3(from 4) in madness mode.

Champion Martina was affected by these changes and his cards were adjusted accordingly.

Dawn / Dusk
Dawn Punishment / Dusk Punisher (enchants): Reduced damage, Sanctify/Burn and Dark/Chill charges reduced to 3(from 4) in normal mode.
Law of Light (enchant): Removed the suffer sanctify when using a card.
Law of Darkness (enchant): Reduced the shield applied when using a card.
Ivory Tower / Obsidian Towe: Reduced the Area block granted. Also reduced the bless and powerful charges in madness mode.
Herald of Dawn / Herald of Dusk: Reduced the vitality charges gained.
Shield Slam: Reduced the base damage.
Armored Steel: Block gain reduced to double the boss block(from Tripe) in normal, reduced the mitigate and reinforced charges gained.

Lord Hanshek
Shadow clones, Wither: Reduced damage a bit, Reduced the heal received per damage done for 200%(from 300%) in normal and for 250%( from 300%) in madness, reduced vulnerable charges applied.
Shadow clones, Consume: Increased the fire damage taken by the shadow to 160(from 120) in normal and to 200(from 160).
Dark Cremation: Reduced the base damage.
Disintegrate: reduced the base damage.

Lord Hanshek was affected by changes in other cards shared with other monsters, like Wither or Gravity Well.

Archon Nhir
Apotheosis (enchant): Reduced the resist bonus to 35%(from 50%) in normal and to 40%(from 50%) in madness, reduced the shield gained on damaged to 8(from 16) in normal and to 13(from 16) in madness mode.
Anathema (enchant): Reduced the resist bonus to 35%(from 50%) in normal and to 40%(from 50%) in madness.
Abstraction (enchant): Reduced the resist bonus to 35%(from 50%) in normal and to 40%(from 50%) in madness. Removed the evasion gained on damaged.
Divine Punishement: Reduced the base damage, in madness increased the damage bassed on bless to x1.5(from x1).
Crushing Darkness: Reduced the damage based on block to x0.3(from 0.5) in normal and to x0.4(from 0.6) in madness, also reduced the dark charges applied by 2.
Corruption: Reduced the damge and poison application based on regeneration to x0.5(from 1) in madness and to x1(from 1.5) in madness mode.
Lethargy: Reduced the damage and insane charges application based on vitality to x1(from 1.5) in madness mode.
Ethereal: Curse charges redcution changed to 40%(from 50%) in normal and to 50%(from 60%) in madness, also reduced the buffer charges gained by 2.
Shadow Clone: Removed Consume card (now the add won't heal or dispel the boss) added a new card to the shadow, Dark Constraint.
Shadow Clone: Dark Outburst explosion card moved to round 6(from 5) in normal mode.


Bug fixes

- Fixed the interaction between the enchantment "Phoenix" and the item "Scroll of Resurrection" activating both at the same time. Now, the enchantment will have priority and the Scroll will not be consumed on the same death.

- Fixed the "Endless bag" item that was not working properly when some specific cards were used last.

- Fixed the "Mirror of Kalandra" not duplicating some of the enchantments casted.

- Fixed the "Restart combat on defeat" settings option, not saving its state between game sessions.

- Modified the autoend function to ensure the game waits for cards that are drawn before passing the turn.

- And much more minor fixes that have been reported.

That's all for now.

if you like the game and you haven't done it yet. Remember to leave a review on steam, it helps us a lot.

As always, thanks to all of you for your support, feedback and understanding.

Hotfix v.0.8.01

Hey everybody! This is a hotfix to solve some of the problems that have been reported with the latest patch.

Fixes

- Fixed the trait "Tireless" that stopped working after a primary stat was modified because the character gained new perks in the middle of the game (f.e. Obelisk stairs).
- Fixed a bug that modified character primary stats on a "new game" based on previous games actions (f.e. Pay HP for higher chance in a corruption altar).
- Fixed a bug that reduced the HP of monsters, on the last map of the Obelisk Challenge, when a desync happened in the game.
- Fixed a bug that prevented the Weekly Challenge to launch in coop games.
- Fixed a problem with the game settings not saving the "Full screen" check between sessions.
Hotfix v.0.7.6
- Fixed a bug with injuries (that use energy, f.e. Sad) being casted right after casting an enchantment that uses energy as catalizer (f.e. Wild Hunt) and not activating it.

Balance

- Archon Nhir: Normal mode, Reduced the charges of Sanctify applied by Celestial Brillance and Crucifixion(white). Also reduced the Insane charges applied by Lethargy and Missery. So, the players will have a bit less sanctify charges and the Total Eclipse(Sanctify-> Dark) spell will be less punishing. In madness +1 reduced the charges of those spells, but way less, and increased just a bit the base damage of the spells to compensate.
- Champion Guts: Reduced 1 Fury charge of his devastate card 2 (from 3) it should gain a bit less fury and do just a bit less damage in the first turns, also bloody retaliation reduced the damage based on his bleed to 150% (from 200%).
- Champion Martina: Reduced to 6(from 7) the bless charges gained with divine intervention enchantment.
- Madness Ring: Changed to be only mind -> Sight. Added a new ring, Terror Ring, that does the mind -> Dark version.
Note, all the other rings of the game did 1:1 curse conversions and madness ring was the only case that did 1:2 curses types.

We have added an option in the gameplay settings to enable or disable the warning to replay a fight in case of defeat, the option is disabled by default.

We want to thank you for the warm welcome of the Act 4 patch. Bear in mind that the game is Early Access and we will keep balancing and polishing a lot of things, so if you have suggestions, bug reports, looking for people to play coop, whatever... feel free to write a post or join our discord and tell us about it!

As usual, thank you so much for your help, reports and suggestions!

Final Act Patch v0.8

Hello everyone, finally Act 4 has arrived, here are the patch notes.

First of all we would like to thank you all for your patience and understanding. This patch has taken longer than expected, Christmas, family reunions, adding new features, reworks that were not foreseen and checking that everything went well has taken its time. Besides the simple fact that we are a very small team and there are always unforeseen events, we hope that from now on the following patches will have a faster cadence. Without further ado, here are the patch notes.


Final Act of the game.

Act 4 is the end point of your adventure, the pursuit of Lord Hanshek and the rescue of the princess takes you to a destroyed world. Where the ruins of an ancient civilization float in the void, unimaginable dangers and incredible relics await you.

New enemies, bosses, events and a whole new area to discover.

Act 4 enemies have their own enchantments, just like the players. These enchantments will challenge your gameplay and your knowledge of the game. Our intention is to add more enchantments to other enemies and bosses in the game before Act 4, so that the player is more familiar with them.

Although act 4 is the final act, it does not mean that it is the last map/biome of the game, we will be adding more content and areas you can choose to go to besides the swamp or the volcano.


Nezglekt and Wilbur join the fray.

Two new heroes available for unlocking, each with their own play style and opening up new group combinations.

Nezglekt, the Prophet, is the fourth healer in the game and specializes in card control and mind spells.

Wilbur, the Loremaster, is the third mage in the game and specializes in lightning spells and books.


Cardbacks, Ranks & Perks.

With this patch we introduce cardbacks in the game, at the moment each hero has three cardbacks available that are unlocked with the hero's rank. But this is just the beginning, soon we will add more cardbacks available by completing the main story, a certain madness level, an obelisk challenge or other achievements in the game. Also, we want to add some special cardbacks for completing the new weekly challenges that we will make soon.

Each hero has its own rank, as heroes rank up they will not only unlock cosmetics like skins or cardbacks, now there are also 2 upgrade levels (blue and yellow) for the special cards of each hero (unique card, initial item and enchantemts) that will be unlocked with the hero rank.

The number of perks available for each hero is now based on the highest rank of your heroes, so now you don't need to rank up all heroes one by one to have perks available for them. Why we changed this system? Well, when we design certain aspects of the game we always try to prioritize the fun side of it, and we saw that unlocking a new character and not being able to continue escaling madness levels because new characters were so low compared to your current roster of heroes, wasn't very funny and gave players a bad sense of grinding to play the game, which is something really far from our game perspective. Although the perk system is fine, we feel that once you have unlocked all 36 perks, the system is a bit bland and could be improved making it a bit more customizable for each hero. Our intention is to tweak it so that each hero has something special to choose from, so expect an overhaul of it within the next patches.


Graphical improvements and stability.

We have redone and improved all the combat backgrounds of the game, of all the acts!

We have changed the graphics of the game's knowledge tome and event book. Also, now all menus are more consistent and have the same type of buttons.

New effects, for the cards and enchantments of the enemies in Act 4.

Game performance has been greatly improved, especially in multiplayer.


Auras and Curses.

Removed the "Haste" aura and "Daze" curse from the game to reduce the number of auras and curses in the game.

Now the Fast/Slow aura/curse modifies the speed by 2 per charge, and each charge is nullified between them. Fast/Slow are still unstackable so cards that used to have Haste/Daze have been replaced by high values of Fast/Slow charges.

From now on to facilitate the understanding of auras and curses, auras will always be executed before curses, so auras/curses will always be ordered below the heroes health bar, first the auras and then the curses (Regeneration will now always go before Bleed but also before the Decay, so be careful).

In this sense, we have added a blue background to the auras and a red background to the curses to help new players to identify them. This option is turned on by default but can be disabled in the options menu.

The "Dark" curse now does damage only to single target, but this damage now takes into account the negative resistances and we have added items that modify the number of charges in which it explodes.

"Evasion" and "Shackle" are incompatible with each other and are mutually eliminated when one of them is gained or applied.

The "Doom" curse has been moved in front of the heroes' health bar. This curse can not be prevented or removed in any way.


Gameplay & Other changes.

This patch has changed many fundamental aspects of the game such as the change in the speed system, upgradeable enchantments and balance. So we won't go into particular details of what cards have been changed/modified. Also don't worry, when the game is released we will document every little change we make to the cards, but now that everything is changing and evolving, writing down every little change takes a lot of time and resources that we can't afford.

Balance changes on most cards, increased damage on higher cost cards and also improved damage on overcharge cards.

Overhealing has been removed, when a hero is at 100% hp he is not healed and therefore the items that are triggered when healing are not activated.

The obelisk challenge has been improved, a third floor has been added. When going up a floor you have the option to choose between several random bonuses and also an option to customize your deck a little bit.

50 new items have been added to the game.

4 new warrior cards and a new healer card.

New achivments and achivements icons added to Steam.

Added 8 new Champions that appear in rng mode, and improved some of the old ones with new enchatments.

New heroes mean new responses and interactions throughout the game.

Many QoL features have been added here and there.

The stability of multiplayer games has been greatly improved.

A gazilion bugs and minor issues have been fixed.


Due to the huge amount of changes in this patch, ongoing games from previous versions (v.0.7.52) are not supported. If you want to finish them you can always load the previous version.


What's next?
As we said at the beginning we hope that the patching frequency will return to what it was, here is what we plan to do in continuation:

- New enchantments for Bosses and Champion monsters. Also improvements & balance for Act 4.
- New cardbacks, with game and knowledge tome unlocks.
- Monsterpedia in the tome.
- Heropedia in the tome, with some surprises.
- Improvement of the Weekly Challenges, each challenge will be different from the others and will include modifications that will change the way to play it.
- Perk system overhaul (may take a bit more time).
- Also, there are many more things in the pipeline (heroes and biomes) but they will be coming during the Early Access.


Along with this patch there will be a Weeklong deal of 20% discount, so it's the perfect opportunity if you were still hesitating to buy it or wanted to give it to a friend!

Remember to leave a review on steam if you like the game, it really helps us a lot. As always, thanks to all of you for your support, feedback and understanding.

We really hope you enjoy this patch and Act 4 as much as we enjoyed creating it.

Adam & Javier.