Halls of Torment News

How to join the beta:
Right-click Halls of Torment -> Properties -> Betas
Here set the beta branch to "beta"


_____________________________

Beta Update | 2023-06-23
The latest Beta was updated. Fixing the issue that the potion of oblivion does not banish all traits from a trait sub group. Also it fixes the LMB override not being working and the Sorceress "Voltage IV" trait that lightning damage can cause burn.
The invisible crystals on the screen should be fixed. as well some sounds and monster spawns for the ingredients.

_____________________________

[h3]Hello brave heroes![/h3]

Here's a new beta build for you to try out. It contains the upcoming Cupbearer feature which includes potions for trait manipulation (reroll, banish, memorize, and double) as well as the unlock mechanics for those potions. There are also some more QoL improvements and minor bug fixes in this one. The Patch notes can be found further below. You can opt-in into the beta but keep in mind that there might be some data loss when switching back to the previous version.


[h2]Cupbearer[/h2]
As mentioned above, this is the main feature of this update. We've covered it in some detail over in a separate Dev Journal post.

[h2]Change Log[/h2]
Target release period: end of this week or start of next week
More detailed information will follow with the main release.

[h3]Features[/h3]

• New NPC: Cupbearer!
  
• Quest to rescue the Cupbearer
  
• The trait selection can have Reroll, Banish, Memorize, and Double Potions
  
• Collect ingredients to unlock all the potions
  
• Collect bottles to increase the amount of each potion
  
• New Item: Gatherer’s Charm (automatically acquired when Cupbearer has been rescued)
  
• for more details see our Dev Journal #4

[h3]Polish & QoL[/h3]

• Item pickup from chests is more intuitive now. The new item will be equipped when the slot is unoccupied, otherwise it will be put into the bag. When the bag is also full, the player first has to make space or discard the chest items.
  
• Improved Golem roll and attack behavior
  
• Improved Imp and Skeleton Summons movement speed and steering
  
• Wraith lance attacks will also play a sound now (Lord of Despair and Wraith Horseman)
  
• Ability Scrolls in the world are sometimes guarded by an elite monster
  
• Performance with lots of XP Gems lying around should now be way better. There should also be no massive slowdowns when picking up a Hand of Greed anymore.
  
• Integrated Godot “delta smoothing” for smother gameplay when the game runs at the vsync limit
  
• Item well state (retrieved, owned, etc.) is not displayed if the Wellkeeper has not been rescued.
  
• Invocator’s Grasp got its own item graphic.
  
• Removed some very loud low frequencies in Exterminator’s fire sound which caused some players to complain about its loudness.
  

[h3]Bug Fixes[/h3]

• Added an error message to the start of the game when Steam could not be initialized. Should fix profile save/load problems.
  
• Fixed input problems with a few more controllers (XBox One Wireless and a few other XBox controllers)
  
• Fixed Lord of Despair lance attack animations.
  
• Overworld selection input when using mouse to select and keys to walk around works better now.
  

Hi there!

We’re currently working on the next update and we wanted to give you a quick preview of what’s coming and what you can expect. The upcoming update won’t be a huge one, since it won’t contain new levels or player characters. However, the new mechanics that are introduced will take about another week to be integrated and tested properly because they mesh in with a lot of stuff that’s already there.

Oh, and if you want to avoid any spoilers on what those new mechanics are all about, we’d advise you to stop reading right now ;)

So with no further ado, here’s what’s coming next:


There’s going to be a new addition to your overworld camp, the Cupbearer, a second NPC that unlocks special potions for you. Those potions don’t work like health potions that you pick up in the Halls. They are potions that you take with you at the beginning of each run and which are refilled each time you enter the Halls.

But what do they do? Well, they basically allow you to do what is most widely known as ‘reroll’ and ‘banish’ in this type of game. Two of the currently available potions serve these two functions in the context of traits. You can use the Strong Wine to reroll a trait selection or you can use the Potion of Oblivion to remove a trait (and all its follow-ups!) from the trait pool for the rest of the run. There are two more potions that allow you to do more advanced things with your traits: the Reverberant Tinkture and the Potion of Memories. We’d like to leave their specific functions to your speculation for now, but we think their names are already a pretty good hint.

After this update, the potions will only work for traits. But we do have plans to introduce new potions that allow you to have more control over abilities (or maybe even items) in future updates.




There are two types of unlocking mechanisms for potions. One unlocks a potion of a specific type while the other increases the available number of an already unlocked potion. You unlock new potions by finding the ingredients scattered across the levels. Ingredients are only visible when you’re wearing the Gatherer’s Charm, which luckily the Cupbearer will drop into your item stash as soon as he arrives at your camp. Once you pick up an ingredient, you don’t have to pass it through the well or anything. Currently they simply appear directly in the Cupbearer’s inventory.

If you want to increase the number of available potions, you’ll have to find appropriate bottles. Each potion has its own bottle type. They are dropped by certain enemies and need to be retrieved via the well. Once you buy them at the Wellkeeper they increase the available amount of the respective potion.




There’s still a ton of things in Halls of Torment we want to improve while at the same time providing additional content with each update. We get a lot of feedback from you regarding bugs and balancing issues and we’re addressing those things one at a time. For instance, summon builds remain less attractive due to their overall performance. We would like to give this part of the game a little bit more work. However, it might take a couple of iterations, since balancing summon based builds is a bit trickier than your typical damage dealing character.

Another area for improvement are the final lord encounters. While the Lord of Pain seems to be pretty much where we wanted him, the other Lords are still lacking the refinement we’d like to have.

Besides all that, there are still bugs to be squashed and in some parts the game is still missing audio. We won’t be able to address all of this in the next update, but it should give you a rough idea where we’re heading.


Thank you for supporting us!
Cheers

Paul from Chasing Carrots

[h3]Hello Adventurers![/h3]

We've just updated the game with some smaller changes as announced in our Dev Journal last week. This includes points like having loadouts per character, statistics in the pause menu, and buffing some summons and the Warlock. Below you'll find a full list of changes.

We'll skip the dev journal this week, but at the end of next week we'll post a preview about the development progress of the next bigger update.

We know there are many more points to address, but need time to evaluate, adjust, and test changes. To focus a bit more on new content the frequency of updates will slow down a bit from here on. As a small reminder, we'd be happy to have the next update ready before June ends, but this depends on how well we progress.

[h3]Thanks for your support!
- Chasing Carrots[/h3]


[h2]Change Log | 2023-06-09[/h2]


[h3]Loadouts[/h3]
Loadouts are now replacing your single equipment set. The equipment will be saved per character. We've also added 4 slots that can be used to save loadouts and share equipment combinations between characters. We also fixed the issue from the beta branch in which the loadout wasn't operable via the gamepad.


[h3]Lord of Pain[/h3]
We wanted to remove the timer from the Lord of Pain without making him much easier or harder. The result is that we added a mechanic where the lord gets harder as time passes. Additionally, there is also a hidden mechanic in the Haunted Caverns to help you with that fight!


[h3]Mouse Only Mode[/h3]
We've added this mode as an accessibility feature so players that are limited to mouse movement and just one mouse button (left-click) can play the game. This option can only be turned on through the settings and you can choose to move by click or only when the left mouse button is held down.
In this mode the attack button is changed to right-click and the toggle for auto-attack MMB or any thumb mouse button.


[h3]Summons and Warlock[/h3]
Summons in general were quite underpowered, so we tried to adjust the power of summons on several ends. Still, two weaknesses of summons will remain, specifically for player who currently have unlocked everything. Summons are not the ideal mechanic to keep the screen clean, they will need time to move and will usually stay close to the character.
Since we're planning game modes in the future in which enemies survive longer, we'll wait before further adjusting summons.
Additionally, we decided that summon-buffing items will not be on ring slots any more in order to always allow for two summon rings to be used. Therefore the Invocation Signet has been changed to the Invoker's Grasp which can now also increase the amount of summons.
Summons from summon rings also had an issue where many traits would not apply to them so they wouldn't get a proper increase in attack power.
Lastly, the Warlock's Stance Proficiency has been adjusted to be simply a decision on main weapon focus or summon focus. Please note that his main weapon attack also counts as summon.


[h3]Rebalancing[/h3]
We have given the game a small rebalancing focused on abilities. First of all, we wanted to bring electrify and burn closer to each other in terms of being viable strategies. Many abilities have now lower chances to apply electrify while we reworked burn stacks a bit to no longer be removed individually but work as a single effect. By adding a burn stack all burn stacks now get extended, making it easier to reach higher burn damage numbers.
For the rest of the changes please check the list below:

• Golem's roll ability was reworked and is now circling the player.
  
• Roll base damage and damage increase for roll duration have been increased.
  
• Golem's attack range has been increased.
  
• Ability upgrades of the golem have now additional effects and increasing damage rather than just transforming the element.
  
• Some adjustments in debuff rate, Transfixion and the Cleric have lower chances of applying those.
  
• Astronomer's Orbs damage has been increased.
  
• Range adjustments on Astromer's Orbs are now stronger.
  
• Astronomer's Orbs have been fixed to not revert spin duration anymore.
  
• Arcane Splinter's range has been increased.
  
• Ringblades throwing distance/speed has been reduced, mostly to avoid it destroying containers far off-screen.
  
• Some of the trade-off traits of the Lightning Strike have been weakened.
  
• The Shockwave of Kugelblitz is not activating as often anymore.
  
• Meteorstrike damage has been slightly reduced.
  
• Meteorshower upgrade was reduced to 2, but the damage of each splinter was increased.
  
• The Voltage line of the sorceress was bugged. Critical hits now give electrify stacks.
  
• Also the burn chance for lightning attacks does work now.
  
• The channeling trait does no longer appear whene there's nothing it can have an effect on.
  

[h3]Other[/h3]

• Fixied an issue with Xbox Elite Gamepads.
  
• Fixed crashes on level-up.
  
• Added an option to toggle the pause on focus lost off.
  
• Corrected several typos.
  
• Level IX ability traits now have the proper number on the frame.
  

How to join the beta:
Right-click Halls of Torment -> Properties -> Betas
Here set the beta branch to "beta"

_____________________________

[h3]Hello brave heroes![/h3]

We have a new beta build for you. This patch will test some new QoL features, balancing, and the Mouse Only mode. The Patch notes can be found further below. You can opt-in into the beta but there might be some data loss when changing back to the previous version.

Please consider joining the Discord for proper feedback exchange.
https://discord.gg/chasingcarrots


_____________________________

[h2]Mouse Only Mode[/h2]
We added an experimental movement mode that uses only the mouse. This mode is not meant to be used with the keyboard and there are currently no further explanations in the game. This is a pure accessibility feature for people that can't use controller or keyboards properly and changes for this mode will focus on this group of people.
Mouse-Only can be activated from the main menu. There is an extra option to make that movement only works while holding left-click, per default clicking will be accepted as well.

• You move my clicking (or holding) the left mouse button at the target position.
  
• When in this mode you will always have auto-aim on, it can't be disabled.
  
• Fire or aim overwrite is with right-click instead left-click.
  
• Middle mouse button or thumb mouse buttons toggle auto-attack.
  

With this change we also added that auto-attack is not required for auto-aim.

_____________________________

[h2]Change Log[/h2]
Target Release Period: This Week
More detailed information will follow with the main release.

[h3]Quality of Life[/h3]

• Every character has now their own equipment set to be saved.
  
• Additionally there are 4 shared load-out slots.
  
• Damage statics can now be viewed from the pause menu.
  
• Added item filters to the item stash.
  

[h3]Lord of Pain[/h3]

• Death timer has been removed.
  
• The Lord of Pain will now get stronger over time.
  
• Lord of Pain HP have been reduced a bit.
  
• Adding a mechanic to ease the Lord of Pain fight.
  

[h3]Warlock and Summons getting reworked[/h3]

• Invocation Signet has been changed to Invoker's Grasp, Adding more buffs to summons.
  
• Invoker's Grasp is a glove so it won't block a space for summon rings.
  
• Summon movement has been improved, they should not be sliding as much anymore.
  
• Warlock traits have been adjusted to better support summons.
  
• Golems roll ability was reworked and is now circling the warlock.
  
• Roll base damage and damage increase for roll duration have been increased.
  
• Golems attack range has been increased.
  
• Ability upgrades of the golem have now additional effects and increasing damage rather than just transform the element.
  
• Astronomer's Orbs have been fixed to not revert spin duration anymore.
  
• The effect of range changes has been increased.
  
• Orbs mass trait move the orbs now more closely to the player.
  

[h3]Rebalancing[/h3]

• Most electrify sources have their chances to apply the effect being reduced.
  
• Burn stacks are no longer individually tracked but are stacked together. Adding a new burn stack extends all burn stacks.
  
• Some adjustment in debuff rate, Transfixion and the Cleric have lower chances of applying those.
  
• Astronomer's Orbs damage has been increased.
  
• Arcane Splinter's range has been increase.
  
• Ringblades throwing distance/speed has been reduced, mostly to avoid it destroying containers far off.
  
• Some of the trade-off traits of the Lightning Strike have been weakened.
  
• The Shockwave of Kugelblitz is not activating as often anymore.
  
• Meteorstrike damage has been slightly reduced.
  
• Meteorshower upgrade was reduced to 2, but the damage of each splinter was increase.
  
• The Voltage line of the sorceress was bugged. Critical hits do now give electrify stacks.
  
• Also the burn chance for lightning attacks does work now.
  
• The channeling trait does no longer appear without anything it can affect it.
  

[h3]Other[/h3]

• Fixing an issue with Xbox Elite Gamepads.
  
• Fixed crashed on level up.
  
• Added an option to toggle the pause on focus loss off.
  

[h2]Hello Adventurers![/h2]

The past week was quite adventurous for us. Thank you all for your great support!
We had only little time to focus on the next bigger additions to the game. But now that the most critical issues have been mostly handled, we can get back on track.

There have been requests for a road map, but we decided against posting one online. Instead we want to give you regular updates about the development progress, decisions, and upcoming content. The outlook we’re going to provide will be limited to a certain time frame. However, we want to be as transparent as possible about the development process, since we believe this is the only way to receive proper feedback.

We hope we can provide an update post every week. The first update will be a general outlook over the next two months. The weeks after that we want to go into further details of particular topics.

——————————

[h2]Short-Term[/h2]
Our plan is to release another update by next week. This update will address mostly currently active content of the game. We’ll expand on QoL features, balancing, and some other miscellaneous changes.

A list of planned items:

• Reworking the Lord of Pain with a proper quest and removing his death timer.
  
• Tweaking balancing of abilities. (Yes, we’ll make the Golem stronger 😉)
  
• Adding more data in the pause menu.
  
• Equipment loadouts in the item stash
  

The update will be first available on the beta branch early next week, but more about the beta branch further below.



[h2]Mid-Term[/h2]
In late June we want to update the game with some new content, but as the Early Access release was quite taxing, the progress hasn’t been as quick as we hoped. Also we need to catch up on a few items that are currently missing in the current stages.

The outline:

• The Cupbearer (an NPC that can be rescued from the Viaduct and will add re-rolls)
  
• Torment Rank Mode (will scale difficulty dynamically for additional rewards)
  
• Re-balancing of several aspects. (items, effects, abilities, characters)
  
• Champion enemies (monsters with additional modifiers)
  
• Possibly some new items, abilities, traits, and blessings
  

[h2]Long-Term[/h2]
Sometime in July we want to bring the next bigger update. This will actually focus on an additional stage, mechanics, characters and abilities. This content might also be added earlier, but new stages take us a lot of time since each of them is quite unique and our goal is to deliver more diverse content.

• Stage 4 (untitled)
  
• At least 2 new characters
  
• At least 2 new abilities
  
• New quests & items
  
• New element & effect
  
• New game mode
  
• New game feature
  

——————————


[h2]The Beta Branch[/h2]
We’ve already deployed the beta branch earlier this week. You can opt-in through the game properties. The beta branch will receive updates before the main game. It will contain many smaller adjustments through its phases without detailed announcements for each patch on Steam.
If you wish getting more involved we’d recommend you to join our Discord server: https://discord.com/invite/chasingcarrots



[h2]About Feedback[/h2]
Thank you all for your feedback. We try to read through everything, but processing feedback takes quite some time. Not only reading but also taking active actions. We’d wish we could answer and discuss everywhere, but then none of us would be actually working on the game!
Please keep it going and know that we are watching 👀 (in a non-creepy way)



Cheers and have a nice weekend!
- Chasing Carrots


PS: HoT is the perfect game that can be played while being stuck in login queues for games that are online only. 😏