Halls of Torment News

Update - Known Bugs

• Switching to uncommon variants does not carry over buff effects
  
• Holy light does not trigger Warrior's Fervour
  
• Wyrms on Ember Grounds are stuck
  
• Max. HP can go into negative
  
• Warrior'r Frevour variant not working at all
  

We'll be fixing bugs early next week, please keep reporting!

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We have another small content update for you!
In this patch we’re addressing the more defensive items, trying to make them more interesting, relevant, and balanced against what you can get out of them compared to traits.


[h3]Level 5 Progress[/h3]
We are making steady progress on the 5th world, but since this will be all new with a lot of new enemy types, animations, and gameplay features, it will all take a bit longer to cook. Currently, we do not expect this to be finished this year, but rather early next year.
Until then we’ll work on smaller updates like this to keep improving the game.


[h3]Crashes and Performance[/h3]
Thank you all for your feedback and the many crash dumps you’ve sent us. They are still very helpful and we are tinkering on many rough edges to improve the overall stability of the game.
Because the technical details are quite involved, we aren’t listing any changes regarding stability. But in general, after the update, crashes should become less and overall performance should improve, especially for abilities like Hailstorm or Arcane Explosion.
If you continue to experience crashes, please let us know and send us the data!
More information here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2218750/discussions/1/3833172326397666982/


[h3]What’s Next?[/h3]
Regarding the smaller content updates, we’ll keep adding quests, ability upgrades, and new items as well as improving the existing ones. Since this patch is focussed more on item rework, in the next patch we’d like to focus more on getting additional ability upgrades into the game, aside from other new content (including items).
This update should most probably arrive before Christmas and it will be coupled with an engine update from Godot 4.1 to Godot 4.2. I will also contain adjustments for the freshly added content depending on your feedback.


[h2]Change Log | 2023-11-24[/h2]

• Various performance optimizations
• Fixed several crash causes and improved overall stability

[h3]Features[/h3]

• Health potions and power ups now have simplified markers
  
• Red markers are for potions and have a max. distance of 50 meters
  
• Yellow markers are for power ups with a max. distance of 100 meters
  

[h3]New Items[/h3]



Holy Relic (Ring)

• Unlocked by the existing Cleric quest “Trained Cleric”
  
• Includes two variants (Duality) and (Blessing)
  

Every 30s when damaged: Place Holy Light
> Heals 50HP and regenerates 0.5/s for 100s
Every 30s when full health: Drop Power Up

Warrior’s Fervour (Necklace)

• Unlocked by the new Norseman quest “Warrior’s Fervour”
  
• Collect 10 Power Ups in one run.
  
• Includes two variants (Lingering) and (Potency)
  

Activates on picking up Potions or Heal Magic.
For 15s: +100% Damage & Attack Speed

Shepherd’s Boon (Necklace)

• Unlocked by the new Warlock quest “Horde Summoner”
  
• Have 20 Summons at the same active
  
• Includes two variants (Numbers) and (Focus)
  

Per active summon: +0.10/s Regeneration
On full health, apply buff on every tick.
Tick Speed: 30s + 6s for every buff.
Buff: +5% Damage (Summon)

[h3]Item Reworks[/h3]


Defiant Plate (Body)

• Updating normal version of the item
  
• Replaced uncommon version with new variants (Passive) and (Reactive)
  

On Damaged: +3 Defense for 10s (max. 30)
On Damaged: +0.5/s Reg. for 10s (max. 5/s)
For 6s undamaged: +3% Force (max. 30%)

Fighter’s Headband (Head)

• Updating normal version of the item
  
• Replaced uncommon version with new variants (Champion) and (Prepared)
  

Effect triggers when an Elite or Boss appears.
For 20s: Regenerate 1%/s
Always Spawn: Health Potion
Spawn on Full Health: Power Up

Pace Setters (Feet)

• Updating normal version of the item
  
• Replaced uncommon version with new variants (Recovery) and (Unrest)
  

Accumulate 5s not moved: Heal by 1%
Full Health: +20% Attack Speed
Wounded: +20% Movement Speed

Blood-Soaked Shirt (Body)

• Updating normal version of the item
  
• Replaced uncommon version with new variants (Rage) and (Undying)
  

On kill with 10% chance: +1 HP.
On full health when killing a foe:
0.4% chance for +1% Damage (Max. 50%)

Blood Catcher (Necklace)

• Updating normal version of the item
  
• Replaced uncommon version with new variants (Life) and (Enhancement)
  

On 200x max. HP damage dealt: +10 HP
Each time triggered: +1% to damage threshold.
On full health: +0.5% Damage (max. 50%)

Scars of Toil (Necklace)

• Replaced uncommon version with new variants (Capacity) and (Sacrifice)
  

Per 1 HP missing:
+0.1% Damage

Maiden’s Tear (Necklace)

• Updating normal version of the item
  
• Replaced uncommon version with new variants (Quick Charge) and (Brimming)
  

Requires to be charged. (30s)
On Hit: Negate damage, charge is used.
While charged: +30% Force & +30% Damage

[h3]Balancing[/h3]


Astronomer’s Orbs

• The hit rate now scales with the orb amount in the Orbit
  
• eg. with 15 orbs the hit rate is now every 0.1s instead of 0.5s for each enemy
  
• Decreasing Base Damage from 40 to 30
  
• Decreasing “Material”-Trait Base Damage improvement from 7 to 6
  

Mask of Madness

• Doubled health reductions
  
• Buffs reduced to 1-2%
  
• Changing ratio of buffs
  
• Damage 50%, Attack Speed 33.3%, Multistrike 16.6%
  
• Expanded description of “Degeneration”-Variant
  
• This variant scales with Health Regeneration
  
• Mask of Madness now lists added sum of buffs in it’s stats
  

Agony

• Fixed that agony rank was not decreasing on death
  
• Increasing the time before enemies reduce agony by 25%
  
• Increasing the amount by which enemies reduce agony by 400%
  
• Agony does not rubberband anymore
  

[h3]Bug Fixes & Improvements[/h3]

• Fixed an issue with multiple sources of invincibility affecting each other.
  
• Fixed an issue with the UI input which made it impossible to navigate to all quests with the gamepad.
  
• Moved the “Ice Slayer”-Quest to a new location on the quest board.
  
• Beast Huntress 2/hp per level bonus did not work, it just added 2 Max. HP in total.
  
• The “Frost” Trait of Frost Avalanche wasn’t applying its effect.
  
• Fencer Gauntlets now do work with the Sorceress.
  
• Meteor Strike’s Attack Speed is no longer extended by the attack duration.
  
• The Meteor Strike cooldown now will be displayed properly.
  
• Some Ring Blades opacity weren’t affected by the settings.
  
• Added a note for the Specialist quest of Phantom Needles regarding double crits.
  

__________________________________________

[h2]Q&A[/h2]
If you have any questions regarding the patch or the outlook, please comment below the news for the next 24 hours and we’ll add the answer’s here.


Do you plan on increasing monster density on Agony 5 or adding additional Agony levels?
Undecided yet. Monsters will be definitely stronger and have higher defense on higher "difficulty" levels. But Increasing monster counts also means impact to the performance. And to add to that - We have a feature in mind where you can adjust difficulty level more freely from the start of a session that unlocks with or after Agony in the feature. (If you ever read something about "Torment Shrine" - that)


Any plans on adding interactables during runs?
Yes, but we haven't them scheduled yet :)


When will you add Steam trading cards and point shop items?
With the 1.0 release next year!


What's with the mysterious stairs to the south of the "camp?"
Originally it was the exist bringing you back to the desktop. People were heavily confused during the early stages of the game so removed that functionality. But we have found a new purpose for them that will be revealed at a later time.


How exactly will a "Turbo Mode" be implemented?
It will be a modifier in the "Shrine of Torment" where you can place artifacts to modify the game. We imagine one or two of those artifacts will be to make the duration shorter. Beware: This would be agony only.


Any plans on having a "Progression" level where the player has to travel between hand-crafted areas while fighting off regular spawns?
No, that would to big for Halls of Torment. There might be possible some handcrafted landmarks being added on the current maps, but that is the extend we'll probably go with the base game.


Are there any plans for adding a gold sink?
Yes, but they'll take a bit more time as they are not so high priority right now.


Are there any plans for localization into different languages ​​in the future?
We'll translate the game for the 1.0 release. Before that we'll continue in English only to hasten development. (Maintaining translations has a big overhead)


Any chance for a male/female variant for every class? What about other cosmetic customization?
Most likely no. While it would be great, because it is a pure 2D game with hundreds of sprites per character not only would it blow the size of the game, it would take months to create 1-2 additional skins for each character. That's the scale of a whole new stage including all enemies and bosses.


Anything in game that explicitly says how force applies to each individual weapon would be very helpful. Does force increase effect on hit %?
During a run you can open the statistics with [Space], you can look through all abilities and items, and any line with (Force) tagged is affected by Force.


Do you guys have any plans on buffing summons?
Buff is a difficult word, but the Skeleton and Imp Ring will get a rework much like the rats. Also, Spirit Warrior's ability will get better balance, we believe that it's currently not as usable as it should be. Outstanding are also 3rd Ability Upgrades for the Golem and Spirit Warriors.


Take care! 🥕
[h3] - Chasing Carrots[/h3]

The time has come!
During the coming days you’ll be able to pick the games you’ve enjoyed the most for the Steam Awards 2023. There will be multiple categories for which you can nominate one game you think stood out the most. It would mean the world to us if you would consider Halls of Torment for one of those categories. However, if all of your votes are spread across all the categories, our chances of being nominated will be very slim. That’s why we would like to suggest a category for Halls of Torment for your consideration.

If you want to vote for Halls of Torment for a Steam Awards nomination, we would appreciate it if you voted for it in the category ‘Sit Back and Relax’.

Other than that, we will be back with another update shortly. Until then, we hope you have a great time!

Cheers! 🥕
- Chasing Carrots

Hello Adventurers!

We have swiftly added a small fix for the "Wide Sweep" achievement.
There has been a bug since the last patch that prevented counting the hit enemies with the Swordsmen.

Thanks for the reports and your patience!

Cheers
- Chasing Carrots

[h2]Hello Adventurers![/h2]
Our work on the next playable stage goes on. To bridge the time until its release, we wanted to bring you some new items and ability upgrades. Naturally, those also come with a slew of bugfixes and minor balancing tweaks.

The most notable change is an adjustment in the Agony mechanic. You’ll notice that the agony rank will increase faster. This might feel more difficult at first if you don’t pay closer attention to what the changes actually entail. Previously killing monsters was the way of increasing your Agony score, while the number of monsters that are still alive contributed to how fast this score was decaying. In some cases this led to some overly dramatic rubber-banding. In order to gain more control over the Agony dynamic, the score is increased over time independent of how many kills you make. However, the Agony decay is still in place. So killing monsters fast will reduce the decay and as such contribute to the overall score increase. The score fluctuations are just not as steep as they were before.

This change will most probably require some tweaks after the fact. Let us know what you think, and we will see how we can improve it for a better experience.

There are a lot more things we have fixed and adjusted in this update. For the list of all changes, see the change log below:

[h2]Change Log | 2023-10-30[/h2]
[h3]Items[/h3]

• New item: Gorgon Mask (Head)
  • Slows down enemies in front of you.
    
  • Deals damage based on slow stacks.
    
  • Unlocked by quest: Viaduct Survivor III (Viaduct)
• New item: Mask of Madness (Head)
  • Take damage in regular intervals.
    
  • On each interval you get a permanent buff in exchange.
    
  • Unlocked by quest: Mark of Madness (Warlock)
• New item: Broker’s Cape (Body)
  • Selects a random debuff from an enemy.
    
  • Tries to apply the selected debuff to all enemies in range.
    
  • Unlocked by quest: Broken Body (Cleric)
• Item Rework: Rat Ring (Ring)
  • Rats now attack the closest enemy that they’ve not attacked yet.
    
  • If rats can’t find a new target, they wait and then attack the previous enemy again.
    
  • Rats deal 20 physical damage to enemies they touch.
    
  • Rat Ring is now affected by summon count.
    
  • Amount of debuffs applied is now affected by Multistrike.
    
  • New uncommon variants.
• Monsters can now have slow resistance and limits on how slow they can be.
  • Resistance: champion (25%), elite (50%), boss (66%), lord (80%)
    
  • Limit: champion (30%), elite, boss, lord (50%)
• It’s more likely now to get uncommon variants of items that the character has equipped.
  • The probability factor is distributed equally among all equipped items.
    
  • The probability factor considers the amount of unlocked items and is increased accordingly.
• Polish: Ring summons are now listed below the item stats.
  
• Polish: Summon rings now have better icons in the info area.
  
• Bugfix: Ring summons will now despawn when rings are unequipped.
  
• Bugfix: Ring summons now have correct summon count limits on re-equipping.
  
• Bugfix: Summoned skeleton mage attacks now also count towards summon damage.
  
• Bugfix: Certain summon counts were not accounted for.
  

[h3]Abilities[/h3]

• New ability upgrade: Phantom Fetter (Phantom Needles)
  • Unlocked by new quest: Phantom Needles Specialist (Viaduct)
    
  • Quest requirement: 10 000 double crits in a run with Phantom Needles
    
  • Slows enemies on hit.
    
  • Gets additional crit chance based on the slow stacks on the hit enemy.
• New ability upgrade: Orbital Shift (Astronomer’s Orbs)
  
  • Unlocked by new quest: Astronomer’s Orbs Specialist (Viaduct)
    
  • Quest requirement: Hit 40 000 enemies in a run with Astronomer’s Orbs
    
  • Orbs change distance from the player, forming a rotating ellipse.
    
  • Orbs deal damage based on the relative distance to the player.
• New ability upgrade: Amputation (Transfixion)
  
  • Unlocked by new quest: Transfixion Specialist (Archer)
    
  • Quest requirement: Apply 150 000 debuff stacks with Transfixion
    
  • Enemies take 10% bonus damage per debuff stack on them.
    
  • Adds an additional Transfixion emitter.
• Transfixion balancing:
  
  • Reduced base damage from 80 to 70.
    
  • Increased the multiplier for multi enemy hits from 66% to 75%.
    
  • Decreased the base damage from deadliness trait from 15 to 10.
• New trait: Crippling Strikes
  
  • Increases slow chance by 15%
    
  • 3 levels (10, 20, 35)
    
  • Unlocks with the new quest “Crippling Strikes” on the Viaduct quest board
• Polish: Swapped places of quests on the Viaduct quest board.
  

[h3]Agony[/h3]

• Agony decay from monsters now starts after a delay.
  • Default delay is 10s. Stronger enemies or enemies that spawn further away have a higher delay.
    
  • Enables slower starting builds or builds that need monsters closer to not lose Agony as long as they can keep up with the normal spawn rate.
• Agony is now generated over time instead of killing monsters.
  • Earliest possibly Agony rank ups are every 4 minutes with Agony 5 being achievable at 20 minutes in.
    
  • Each Agony rank now requires the same amount of points to reach.
    
  • There is a small buffer beyond Agony 5 to not directly fall below Agony 5 if the killing speed dips for a moment.
• Agony still decreases on revive, a revive now decreases Agony by 1 rank.
  
• Agony scaling has been adjusted so that Agony 5 difficulty is similar on each stage.
  • Adding damage scaling for all stages (stronger on lower stages) -> 2.5% - 10% per Agony level
    
  • Increased monster health scaling on lower Agony ranks.
    
  • Increased XP and gold drop scaling on lower Agony ranks.

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

• Auto aim now works for all characters on most of the visible screen space.
  
• Fixed name of Reverberant Bottle item (wrongly labeled Memorizing Bottle)
  
• Uncommon Firewalker Boots now give 1.0m/s base speed increase (previously 0.5m/s)
  
• Profile restoration is performed at game start when a corrupted profile has been detected.
  
• Adjusted ability descriptions
  
• Ring of Frost description stated wrong frost chance on hit (it’s 15% not 10%)
  
• Meteor Strike main projectiles were not affected by most Meteor Strike upgrades
  
• Hailstorm changes:
  • Traits now properly display they are associated with Hailstorm.
    
  • Increased satellite drop base damage from 200 to 500.
    
  • Increased satellite drop direct damage area radius from 3m to 4m.
    
  • Increased movement speed factor from x0.2 to x0.3.
    
  • Increased trigger distance of vortex and spikes from 2m to 2.5m.
    
  • Reduced base force of vortex from 100 to 75.
    
  • Reduced emit count from “Eyes” trait from +0.33 base to +0.3 base.
    
  • Added a movement speed factor reduction of base x0.05 to the “Wind” trait.
    
  • Changed “Updraft” trait base damage from flat +40 to 30%.
    • This means 40 -> 150 for the satellite drops
      
    • This means 40 -> 30 for the spikes

[h3]Performance[/h3]

• We’ve done some under-the-hood performance optimizations. There’s still room for improvement and we’ll keep on working on that front.

[h2]What's Next?[/h2]
We will continue improving the game'S performance while our work on the next stage and other additional content goes on. We also plan to release further smaller item-based updates to slowly fill your stash with interesting ways to customize your characters and playstyles. So stay tuned for the next one!

Take care! 🥕
- Chasing Carrots

[h2]Hello Adventurers![/h2]
Thanks for reporting all the issues with the latest patch.
We have fixed the most important bugs.

This should also recover save games in many cases.
To make sure the save game loading is working properly, restart Steam if it was open since the update of yesterday.

If there are still issues left, please let us know. If you want to manually check your save files, you can do that here:

• Cloud: https://store.steampowered.com/account/remotestorageapp/?appid=2218750
  
• Windows: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\\2218750\remote
  
• Linux: \userdata\\2218750\remote
  

[h2]Change Log | 2023-10-17[/h2]
[h3]Polish[/h3]

• Hailstorm spikes got adjustment to improve performance
  
  • Increased base damage
    
  • Lower spawn rate
    
  • Shorter duration
    
  • Delayed spawns
    
  • Increased area for spikes
• Hailstorm “Updraft” trait got the base damage increased from 10 to 40

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

• In some cases save files were lost, they should be back now
  
  • A restart of the Steam environment or the device (Steamdeck) might be needed.
    
  • If you still have problems with your current profile, we recommend restoring the most recent profile backup in the profile menu.
    
• Uncommon Berserker Boots do now use the new icon.
  
• Arcane Rift got its blast animation back.
  
• Hailstorm spikes visibility can now be adjusted through the ability visibility.
  
• Game got stuck when opening the Steam Overlay.
  
• Hail Storm quests are now properly unhidden, when adjacent quests have been completed.
  

Take care! 🥕
Chasing Carrots

UPDATE EDIT (2023-10-18): There seems to have been a little mixup while releasing the hotfix. Apparently it hasn't been updated properly, but the fixes above should be available now. Players on the experimental branch are not affected by this. Sorry for the delay!