Striving for Light News

With update 0.9.8 we are reworking the character, skills and weapon unlocks to make it much easier to unlock the fun stuff and provide more determined progression. The pathfinder also got a major rework, with not only a new tutorial guiding new players but also allowing a direct teleport to a new map.

With this update we are questioning old and dated systems to make them fresh and engaging. Just because it is like it is does not mean it has to stay as it is.

[h2]Major Improvements and Changes:[/h2]

• Pathfinder Rework: The Pathfinder is a powerful device that lets you teleport to new maps. Critical components have been captured by the Aeodra and their servants. Utilising the full potential of the pathfinder will require to find the missing components first.
  
  
  
  The pathfinder system is now locked on new save files and will unlock after defeating the serpent on the void map for the first time. If you already have an active run past this progress the pathfinder will be unlocked automtically for you. Player feedback has shown that the Pathfinder system is an unnecessary layer of complexity. It is best introduced at a later stage when players have acquired map shards to make use of the system. Furthermore a new tutorial has been added to explain map mods and the map corruption system.
  
  Pathfinder teleporting got reworked. The time where you had to select a map in the pathfinder to go back to the portal, reactivate the portal and then enter the portal is over. You can now teleport directly from the pathfinder screen with the power of just one button click. Furthermore the pathfinder got a complete visual redesign as the old design was ancient.
  
  
• Easier Character Unlocks: Character unlocks are now much easier obtainable. Reaching level 10 on your first run will already unlock the Dark Wanderer. Reaching level 15 with Dark wanderer will unlock the Rogue character. Reaching level 15 with Rogue will unlock the Farmer character. Character unlocks from the town Ankerath are now possible directly without the need to unlock all weapons and skills. The unlock cost is also reduced to 10.
  
  
• Reworked Unlocks: Unlocks in general now have a dynamic price with the first unlocks being as cheap as 1 light fragment and then ramping up the more you have already unlocked. The dialogs now display the dynamic pricing showcasing exactly what you need for the unlocks. We want to give players access to the fun stuff as early as possible so that you can spend more time playing the game with everything it has to offer.
  
  
  
  
• Map Unlocks: The spawn chance of the map unlock device is now increased to unlock new maps much earlier.
  
  
• Descent Expedition: The cost to increase expedition depth has been greatly reduced. Cost per levels are now (2,4,6,8,10,12) was (10,20,30,40,50,60). The choice of which expedition depth you are choosing should be determined by what you build and playstyle can handle rather if you farmed enough sky gems.
  
  
• Improved Controller Navigation in Trees: You can now press two directions on the d-pad for more precise node jump navigation in the pathfinder and skilltree.
  
  
• Character Specialisation Rebalancing:
  • Range Unknown Wanderer Specialisation rebalancing: Powerful cast now can not be obtained directly at level 10 to allign it with melee unknown wanderer.
    
  • Powerful cast now increases projectile damage +150% (was 200%)
    
  • Dual Force now increases melee damage +150% and projectile damage +100% (was 150%)
    
  • Uber Slash now grants +10% crit chance and +100% crit damage (was +300% before)
    
  • Critical cast now grants 15% crit chance (was 20%) and +50% crit damage (was +200% before)
    
  
  
  
• Crafting Potential: Character starting weapons now start with 10 crafting potential (was 0 before).
  

[h3]Further improvements:[/h3]

• Added glow effect to unused skill points in the skilltree
  
• Improved the available specialisations points UI design to allign it with the skilltree design. A glow effect now indicates you have specialisation points to spend.
  
• Improved position of legacy tree of light level
  
• The enter map button is now focused on default when clicking on a map using controller input
  

[h3]Bugfixes:[/h3]

• Fixed sky forge weapons stats UI not updating when selected weapons
  
• Fixed a crash when dying and having ranged companions active
  
• Fixed serpent boss layering
  
• Added back the vanished map decorations in the basement map
  
• Fixed destroyable cave chests not being destroyable
  

[h3]Bugfix:[/h3]

• Fixed a crash when defeating a minor boss after defeating an awakened gatekeeper
  

[h3]Improvements:[/h3]

• Improved character weapon layering in choose gamemode screen
  
• Improved shadow effect on player characters
  
• Improved weapon positioning for player characters
  

[h3]Bugfixes:[/h3]

• Fixed wrong damage number calculation for glaring light skill
  
• Fixed popping in world fog effects when moving left or right
  
• Fixed corrupted merchant getting stuck in non attacking loop
  
• Fixed switching to skilltree on world event start preventing bosses or enemies to spawn
  
• Fixed a crash on choose game mode screen when wildfire wrath weapon was equipped
  

A small update with big performance impact.

[h3]Improvements:[/h3]

• General Performance improvements: The enemy idle states have been completely reworked to not have any performance impact. Now the amount of spawned enemies on the map should not impact performance as it did previously and which could be noticeable on high endgame maps.
  

[h3]Balancing:[/h3]

• Glaring light now increases your melee and range attack cost by 2 energy and 2 endurance to allign it with the cost to upkeep the ability. After the recent base energy and endurance max and regeneration increase glaring light was very easy to upkeep with the power and AoE it provided.
  

[h3]Bugfixes:[/h3]

• Fixed sanguine strike hidden effect on very fast attack triggers
  
• Fixerd a crash with sunfire sceptre
  
• Added translations for secret sheep
  
• Fixed awakened gatekeeper achievements with corrupted weapons triggering on normal bosses
  
• Fixed leaderboard not being able to switch between hardcore, softcore game modes and to view other game difficulty tiers. (v.0.9.7.4b)
  

With update 0.9.7.3a-d we are introducing a highly requested feature: Displaying the possible weapon base damage rolls on the weapons. Fast pathfinder loading and improved enemy AI. Furthermore this update is packed with performance improvements, visual enhancements for the pathfinder, balancing reworks and bugfixes.

[h3]New Features:[/h3]

• Display Weapon Damage Range Tooltips: On each weapon tooltips you will now find a new hint that you can press right mouse button or right thumb stick on the controller to view the base weapon damage range the weapon can roll
  
• Improved Enemy AI: enemies now have much smoother velocity transitions between idle, move and attack states
  
• New pathfinder loading system: Pathfinder now loads much faster after it has been initialised for the first time this fixes potential issues with memory leaks and long loading times in endgame
  

[h3]Improvements:[/h3]

• Performance improvements for enemy path finding
  
• Performance improvements for all weapon drops
  
• Improved enemy AI and movement transitions between enemy attack states
  
• Echo weapons now only appear on the merchant trade and aeodra arena reward if there are available echos that can actually be dropped (previously the weapon just got directly removed if you selected an echo but there was none created)
  
• Improved elder branch range weapon visual effect
  
• Reduced size of high damage numbers.
  
• Random world events now all have the same chance to spawn. So you should see the different rift world events all spawn with the same possibility. Previously there was some code related favourism on spawn rate, depending in what order world events have been assigned.
  
• Performance improvements for all enemies and their idle state
  
• More natural enemy spawn positioning on maps
  
• Reduced enemy player detection time for enemies
  
• New pathfinder map connection design to bring it up to pair with the recent skilltree connection line redesign
  
• Further refined skilltree connection design
  
• Specialisation tooltips that contain condition damage now display the first 3 condition damage ticks like for the skillnodes
  

[h3]Balancing[/h3]

• Flood damage now only scales with projectile damage (did scale with projectile and melee damage)
  
• Fragmentation damage now only scales with melee damage (did scale with projectile and melee damage)
  
• Bursting Shot and Bursting Hit now only scales with melee damage (did scale with projectile and melee damage)
  
• Increased condition damage decay condition damage ticks now get 50% reduced damage (was 40% before)
  
• Changed the specialisation tree for the goladir and melee unknown wanderer to make endurance shield as accessible as energy shield
  

[h3]Bugfixes:[/h3]

• Fixed a potential crash in descent expedition world event
  
• Fixed layering of world objects, previously it could happen that the rift world events hide some traps. Or the background could cover up some player effects.
  
• Fixed missing translation for caustic wounds in rogue specialisation
  
• Fixed empowered ailments specialisation not buffing condition damage. It now increases your condition damage by +20
  
• Fixed rolling stone boss triggering end of aeodra arena event to early
  
• Fixed achievement for ancient tree and elder club not unlocking on awakened boss version
  
• Fiexd enemies getting stuck in pathfinding loop when there have been items located around your player position
  
• Fixed heleja blink ability animation getting stuck
  
• Fixed a crash on character selection screen if gloomtide weapon was equipped and if there are active melee on attack triggers
  
• Fixed construct range attack initialising wrong attack speed after loading a map
  
• Fixed a crash on closing crafting window with x button from in game. (v.0.9.7.3b)
  
• Fixed new introduced weapon damage range calculation. (v.0.9.7.3b)
  
• Fixed crashes due to the new introduced weapon range display. (v.0.9.7.3b)
  
• Fixed attack cooldown UI stopped working after closing crafting window from in game. (v.0.9.7.3b)