Striving for Light News

[h3]🌟New Features: [/h3]

• Cycle through Loot: You can now cycle through multiple dropped trinkets and weapons if they have dropped nearly next to each other by pressing down d-pad button on controller
  
• Improved Loot Physics: Weapons and Trinkets now behave more physical featuring de-acceleration when dropped, what makes them less likely to lay on top of each other. This should also make it easier to see what items you have dropped from chests
  

[h3]⚙️ Improvements: [/h3]

• Improved loot drop positioning for the gambling at Darokin. Also reduced dialog collider of Darokin to make it easier to pick up items around Darokin without triggering his dialog.
  

[h3]🔧Fixes: [/h3]

• Fixed city plaza wrong collider placement
  
• Trinket stats UI is now as well directly closed when exchange trinket UI is closed
  
• Fixed massive shadow on ice bird enemies
  

[h2]🌟New Features: [/h2]
[h3]More Accessible Softcore Mode[/h3]
In softcore mode you will now gain a new shield charge after each defeated gatekeeper. The gained shield charge is now also indicated by a new blue visual effect. Previously shields recharged after each 10 levels. This was way to unclear when shields are recharged and way to unsteady. With this new change softcore mode should be more accessible for new players.

[h3]Shockwave Culling System[/h3]
A new shockwave culling system was implemented that prevents multiple shockwaves being spawned on top of each other, preventing screen articfacts. This should also lead to improved performance.

[h2]⚙️Improvements:[/h2]

• Companions are now teleported to your current player position whenever you enter a gatekeeper arena, descent expedition room or world event with barriers.
  
• Companions on respawning when getting out of reach do not perfectly stack on each other keeping better overview on the amount of companions you have
  
• Improved player level up visual effect
  
• Redesigned Light Staff and Phoenix Staff Projectile visuals
  
• Improved Descent Expedition background visuals
  
• Improved bleeding blade visuals
  

[h2]⚖️Balancing:[/h2]

• Tower Defense Upgrades: Blade Orbit now does not knockback enemies (did knockback)
  
• Tower Defense Upgrade: Each Blade Orbit upgrade now increases the chance to spawn an additional blade orbit (was a guaranteed spawn increase before)
  

[h2]🔧Fixes:[/h2]

• Fixed wrong wording on descent defense event start button
  
• Paused game on tower defense while selecting upgrades now does not trigger further tower abilities on pause and release all of them when continuing
  
• Fixed reset serpents phase spawn on softcore when you have died and re-entering the gatekeeper arena
  
• Fixed glaring light total duration of only 1s (should be 3s) (v.0.9.0.1a)
  
• Fixed vanishing trinkets that have been exchanged and dropped again (v.0.9.0.1a)
  

[h3]🌟New Features: [/h3]

• Quality of Life for Trinkets: On trinket exchange now automatically the next empty slot is focused. If all slots are taken the first trinket slot is focused as usual
  

[h3]⚙️Improvements: [/h3]

• Improved Trinket Tooltips: Trinket ability duration now has the suffix "s" to indicate that the trinket ability duration is measured in seconds
  
• Improved Trinket Tooltips: Trinket ability cooldown has the suffix "enemies" to indicate that the ability cooldown is depending on defeated enemies
  
• Improved player level up visual effect (rolled back)
  
• Performance improvements for chicken companions (vfx rework)
  
• Performance improvements to range companions (vfx rework)
  
• Increased brightness on forest map
  

[h3]🔧Fixes:[/h3]

• Fixed crash when exiting rescue darokin world event
  

Fixes:

• Stats window now resumes if it was kept open on closing the skill tree
  
• Fixed a crash when loading offline save files
  
• Fixed ancient tree root attack layering
  
• Inverted the functionality of the transparency sliders in the options menu as they actually have controlled the opacity.
  

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

After many months of hard work we are hyped to release the long anticipated "Descent" content update!

In this post we will go over all the new features, improvements, balancing changes and fixes that version 0.9 will bring to you.


Together with the release of the Descent content update we are hosting an Awakened Gatekeeper Event. Stream your progress live on twitch, defeat all Awakened Gatekeepers in Hardcore mode to unlock the new achievements.

First 3 players succeeding will win:
20€ Steam Gift Card + 1x Striving for Light Steam Key + 1x Striving for Light Soundtrack

To participate join our Discord and register for the Event-Role.



[h2]🌟New Features:[/h2]

• Descent Defense: A new tower defense like game mode with new run specific currency.
  
• Descent Expedition Dungeons: Upgradable dungeons utilizing the new currency.
  
• New Trinket System: 31 unique trinkets added to the game featuring legendary trinkets and new active abilities (shapeshifting, healing, attacks, skills, stats).
  
• Active Abilities System: Next to your main attacks you can now find trinkets that grant a second ability that you can trigger on "Q" by default (can be changed in options) and "RB" on controller.
  
• New Attack and Ability UI: We added a new attack and ability UI for more responsive combat
  
• Maps and Enemies: 2 new maps: Beach & Courtyard featuring 6 new enemies, 6 new map bosses and 2 new gatekeepers to fight.
  
• Gatekeeper Weapons: 2 new gatekeeper weapons have been added, featuring a melee weapon that triggers projectiles and a ranged weapon that enables mine throw play styles.
  
• Bloodstained Chest: Engage in this new mysterious world event.
  
• Rewoked Tree Of Light: The legacy skill tree got a complete rework and new kind of skill nodes have been added to the legacy tree (like companion/projectile/melee/condition/crit damage node) for even more specialised runs.
  
• City Plaza: The city has been redesigned and a new plaza was added to the city where you can now find the leaderboards in online mode.
  
• Awakened Leaderboards : There is now a new leaderboard tracking your progress and the time and date when you have defeated all 11 awakened gatekeepers in the current season.
  
• Enemy Designs: All "old" enemies have been completely redesigned (6 enemies in total and 1 new enemy and map boss added to older maps).
  
• Gatekeeper Arena: A new battleground awaits.
  
• Awakened Gatekeepers: Fearsome foes that spawn at map tier 6 and beyond. There are band new achievements for defeating those Awakened Gatekeepers.
  
• New Soundtracks: 5 new tracks with over 18 minutes of playtime. Prepare for some of the darkest sounds Striving for Light has seen so far. This takes our SfL OST to a total playtime +77 min
  
• Softcore Mode: Softcore mode now grants 1 more shield and features the same leveling experience as the hardcore mode.
  
• New Visual Effects: A big portion of older visual effects got a complete rework and got optimised for improved performance.
  

[h2]⚙️ Major changes and improvements:[/h2]

• Player Movement Speed: The base player movementspeed got increased.
  
• Player Skills: Numerous abilities have been redesigned with fresh visuals.
  
• Blazing Dodge: It's not just a dodge with a burning dot anymore - leave a burning trail in your wake!
  
• Accurate Enemy Spawns: Enemy spawn algorithm got a complete rework. All enemy spawns are now indicated by a red dot and do not spawn upon your current player position.
  
• Enemy Attacks: Redesigned to offer a fresh challenge.
  
• Map Unlocking System: A map unlocking device was implemented that you can find on maps to unlock new environments.
  
• Extended Map Modifiers: A new map modifier has been added that increases elite enemy spawn rate and increases trinket drop rates
  
• Crafting UI: The crafting UI got a redesign
  
• Map Redesigns: Old maps have been given a visual overhaul.
  
• Performance: Game runs smoother with our latest improvements.
  
• Map Lighting: Map lighting got a complete rework granting more vibrant colors and removes this feel of a dark vail covereing the screen
  
• Old Content Updated: Plenty of tweaks and improvements to older content for a fresh feel.
  
• Improved Hitboxes: Plenty of enemies have received improved hitboxes. No more invisible hits from corrupted merchant or devourer.
  
• Improved Controller Support: Stats window got improved controller support to be ableto view tooltips on weapons, character and the new trinkets. Improved controller support for the skill tree and skill tree UI navigation.
  
• More world Event Variation: World event spawnrates got adjusted to not overload maps with events. Now there are more different events on maps for more variety.
  
• Consitent Arena Music: The music in the aeodra arena is now continuously playing and not jumping to the action loop on each wave start.
  
• Consistent Naming: Remove items at darokin in town for gambling has been renamed to "convert items" as it now also converts left over trinkets and weapons to light fragments
  

[h2]⚖️ Balancing changes:[/h2]

• Phoenix world event now has a lower skill shard drop rate (was 100% before)
  
• Elite enemies now only have a chance in dropping additional huge light fragments containing a light fragment and additional exp (was 100% before)
  
• Life leech got buffed to 1HP/120 defeated enemies on the first node taken (was 1HP/150 before)
  
• Plenty of enemies got improved and changed attack patterns
  
• Softcore mode now has the same required exp scaling as hardcore mode
  

[h2]🔧 Fixes:[/h2]

• Fixed some crashes on some weapon skill combinations
  
• Fixed controller issues in the skilltree
  
• Fixed not being able to go back to map from the gatekeeper arena
  
• Fixed some missplaced enemy hitboxes and colliders
  
• Fixed and cleaned up old art that had some artifacts on borders creating weird red lines floating around enemies when highlighted enemy option was enabled
  
• Fixed various cases where using a portal has removed the collected map chest key
  

In case you missed our last two previews for the descent content update, where we go into detail about the new featues and mechanics, you can read them here:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1646790/view/3694694975390397377
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1646790/view/3754369573818192135

We want to thank you for your patience and the ongoing support! If you want to stay up to date with the ongoing development and chat with fellow players about the new update, you are invited to join our discord.