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Halls of Torment News

Halls of Torment is classic Diablo meets Vampire Survivors

Ah hell, going to say goodbye to any free time I had for the next month. Halls of Torment has sucked me right in being a blend of retro Diablo and Vampire Survivors.

Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/03/halls-of-torment-is-retro-diablo-meets-vampire-survivors

HoT Update 2023-03-23

Hello Adventurers!


Greetings from the team! We’d like to thank you once more for your support. We reached over 15 000 Wishlist entries for the Early Access, still rising. There are over 100 discussions in the Forum going on, a wiki is getting started, a subreddit has been created and we have great activity on the Discord Server.
Also a huge thanks to all content creators and streamers for sharing their joy about the game. We are reading and watching through as much feedback and impressions as we can.

Development is moving forward quickly and it’s time for another patch!


[h2]Change Log 2023-03-23[/h2]

[h3]FEATURES[/h3]
  • The Flamedancer, first boss of Ember Grounds, got two new attack patterns.


[h3]PERFORMANCE[/h3]
  • Improved performance of monsters
  • Improved player upgrade performance
  • Improved Abilities performance
  • Improved of XP Gem performance


[h3]STABILITY ISSUES[/h3]
  • Sometimes on pickup the game would crash.
  • Fixed a freeze when an item chest was collected while the player was dying.
  • Fixed that loading of stages could be triggered multiple times.


[h3]OTHER CHANGES[/h3]
  • Visual Upgrades to Ember Grounds
  • Visual Upgrades to the Overworld
  • Updated all trait frames
  • Added several new item graphics


[h3]POLISH & QOL[/h3]
  • Added general description to undiscovered quests
  • Changed item stash location and sprite in the overworld
  • Improved sprite visibility of Ashen Wyrms in Ember Grounds
  • Auto-Aim will now target on breakables
  • When reviving an effect is shown


[h3]BUG FIXES[/h3]
  • Bullets would not properly react to: Sparking Tips, Ring of Fire, Shockwave Core
  • Sparking Tips projectiles would not set enemies on fire
  • Firewalker Boots and Bogged Boots no longer react to the attack speed modifier
  • Dragon’s Breath could trigger burn endlessly on hit
  • Dragon’s Breath and Ring of Fire now make the Fire Affinity trait appear (if unlocked)
  • Fixed quest description for monster type kill quests
  • Added monster types to all monsters on Ember Grounds (mostly Scorched and Imps)
  • Items could be picked up multiple times from chests
  • When re-entering a level, values on the right side should be properly reset now
  • Quests’ hidden state will now be saved properly. A patch will unhide all falsely hidden quests.


[h3]BALANCING[/h3]
  • Reworked Transfixion ability: lower chance for the debuff but significantly increasied damage
  • All burning effects: 10dmg/0.2s for 2s -> 25dmg/0.5 for 5s
  • All burning chances have been generally halved
  • Flamewalker boots trigger distance: 2.5m -> 5m
  • Flamewalker boots burn chance as been reduced by 60%
  • Sparking Tips damage 5 -> 25
  • Shockwave Core range: 1.5m -> 2.0m
  • Exterminator’s projectile damage falloff: 30% -> 25%
  • Dragon’s Breath cooldown traits: increasing attack speed bonus
  • Potions heal now 25 + 5% health
  • Potion and Hand of Greed drops have been increased by 20%
  • Invincibility time after spawn of slimes has been reduced to 200ms



[h2]What's Next?[/h2]

For the next few weeks the balancing and bug fixes will be reduced as we are back concentrating on creating additional content and working on new features to work towards the Early Access launch. We’ll still update the PRELUDE every 1-2 weeks ahead of the Early Access launch for adjustments.

Feedback especially on performance and stability would be appreciated!


[h3]Cheers!
- Chasing Carrots[/h3]


HoT Update 2023-03-15

Hello Adventurers!


Thank you for your support! We had an awesome first week with the PRELUDE and we are glad that you’ve found enjoyment in the Halls of Torment. We’ve read through your feedback and issue reports.
Today’s update will mainly address the problems we could fix until now and smaller changes to the game.


[h2]Change Log 2023-03-15[/h2]

[h3]FEATURES[/h3]
  • Full gamepad support has been added and a steam default configuration has been set.
  • If you have any input problems, please reset the gamepad to default settings for the game.


[h3]BALANCING[/h3]
  • XP distribution has been modified among monsters, giving early monsters more XP comparatively.
  • Completed quests now only give 0.5% additional XP instead of 1%.
  • Astronomer’s Orbs now have a smaller starting distance.
  • Range modifier affects Astronomer’s Orbs less.
  • Size modifier of Astronomer’s Orbs has been reduced.
  • Second orbit of Astronomer's Orbs now spawns closer to the player.
  • Disabled the automatic difficulty scaling (Torment Rank) for now.


[h3]OTHER CHANGES[/h3]
  • Piercing Wind trait unlocks only when the player has an attack that requires Piercing.
  • Mouse cursor will not be hidden anymore. This should fix disappearing cursor issues overall.
  • More Linux versions should natively be supported. Anything newer than Ubuntu 18.04 LTS should work.


[h3]POLISH & QOL[/h3]
  • The Wellkeeper cage location in Ember Grounds is indicated with a marker.
  • Opening the pause menu will always open the character view first.
  • Main menu can be opened without selecting a character.


[h3]BUG FIXES[/h3]
  • Weapon Proficiency is now using roman numerals.
  • Blessings and stages are now unlocked without having to restart the game.
  • Quests requiring certain damage now include critical hits (e.g. Power Hitter).
  • Killing 50 000 enemies with effects quest is now properly tracking progress.
  • Lord of Pain kills are now properly recognized by the quest system.
  • Character selection via gamepad has been fixed.
  • Runner Shoes movement buff has been fixed and should be now permanent.
  • Corrected the description of Spellcaster Gloves: it increases all direct damage.
  • Scorched Skeletons in Ember Grounds dropped way too much XP.
  • It should now be possible to equip the right ring slot properly at any time.
  • Health of monsters now doesn’t increase over time in Ember Grounds.
  • Fixed stats display of pickup ranges and health regeneration tooltips.


[h3]PERFORMANCE[/h3]
  • Optimised environments
  • Optimised Imp behaviour
  • Optimised performance of destructible objects


[h3]STABILITY ISSUES[/h3]
  • Fixed: Certain monsters could cause crashes on death events.



[h2]What's Next?[/h2]
We’re still looking into more issues. For now, it’s uncertain how many problems we’ll be able to fix in the near future. There’s one particular issue with the game’s input that seems to occur on certain setups which we’re working on right now. Alongside we’ll work on performance and stability improvements.

But we also need to make progress for the Early Access release. Hence, we’ll start working on some additional features and content. We’ll continue to listen to your feedback about progression, difficulty, balancing, and more. Based on this, some changes may also find their way into the PRELUDE Version.


We hope you’ll keep enjoying the game!
Chasing Carrots

Update 2023-03-09

Hello Adventurers!


In time for the PRELUDE we have more exciting changes to share with you.


[h2]Change Log 2023-03-09[/h2]

[h3]FEATURES[/h3]
  • Level 2 (Ember Grounds) now has a proper progression with its own elites and bosses. Some bosses are substitutes for now and are slightly different versions from the first stage.
  • Additional enemies with ballistic projectiles (Vulcano Slime Elite)
  • Additional exploding enemies (Bomber Imps and Unstable Magma Slimes)
  • Many more additional enemies for Ember Grounds


[h3]BALANCING[/h3]
  • Ember Grounds now has a steeper XP curve in the beginning
  • Traits are now available based on your level
  • Additional level 4 & 5 traits have been added for most general traits
  • Effect of traits have been adjusted (up and down, overall values increased)
  • Movement speed mods have been decreased as well as enemy speed
  • Adjusted drop rates of Hand of Greed and Potions


[h3]OTHER CHANGES[/h3]
  • Wishlist and discord buttons in the top right of the overworld UI


[h3]POLISH & QOL[/h3]
  • Several assets for items have been added
  • Descriptions of traits, abilities and modifiers have been updated
  • XPGain and Pickup range are now displayed in the stats


[h3]BUG FIXES[/h3]
  • Several quests were bugged. While some were removed, most have been fixed
  • Fixed the quests that should have been visible where hidden
  • Fixed a bug where revive blessings would crash the game
  • Fixed a bug where monster speed would increase during pause



[h2]What's Next?[/h2]
Bug fixes and improvements! For the next week we haven’t planned anything specific. We will probably prepare more content and see what problems arise. From the next update on, there might be different patches for our Playtest version and the PRELUDE.
If you are interested in the Playtest, visit us on our Discord to learn more. We keep on developing the game with our community, and feedback from playtesters is essential for us when it comes to new features and content.

[h3]Have a nice week![/h3]
Chasing Carrots

PRELUDE available Now!

[h2]Hello Adventurers![/h2]

The PRELUDE to Halls of Torment has been released and we invite everyone to play!
This is a stand-alone
Demo version of Halls of Torment and can be played for free.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2316660/Halls_of_Torment_Prelude/

We hope you’ll join us on our adventure making the game by giving it a try and if possible leave some feedback along the way. The PRELUDE savegame will be fully compatible with the main version of the game and can be played on Windows and any Linux device, including the Steam Deck.

Since the development of the game is in full swing, many parts of the game are still not fully fleshed out, yet. This includes bits that you can find in the PRELUDE. While development continues, we intend to update the demo version with bug fixes, QoL updates, and other changes that affect the content including the demo.

[h3]What can you play in the Demo?[/h3]
  • 3 Characters
  • 2 Stages
  • 20+ unique enemies
  • 7 Abilities
  • 100+ Traits
  • 50+ Quests
  • 30+ Items


Halls of Torment will have full gamepad support. You can already play it with a gamepad but we are aware of some limitations in certain UIs. This will be fixed in the upcoming weeks.

If you enjoy the game, please spread the word, wishlist the main game and join our Discord to be part of our community.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2218750/Halls_of_Torment/

Cheers!
- Chasing Carrots