Halls of Torment News

HoT Update 2023-08-31

Hello Adventurers!

It’s time for an update! Those of you who have played on the beta branch will have seen most of the changes already. But there are a couple of new things in this update that didn’t debut on the beta branch. And of course we’ve also fixed some bugs that popped up during beta testing.

Highlights of this update are the two new characters: the Norseman and the Beast Huntress. Both feature ice based attacks, each in a different and unique way. In addition to this we have a couple of new abilities for you to try out. Two of them, the Ice Avalanche and the Flame Strike were playable in the beta version. But we’ve added two more: the Arcane Rift and the Spirit Warrior. We’re sure you’ll find something new in here that fits your combat preferences.

Without further ado, here’s a list of all the bigger changes. Please keep in mind that there might be some overlap between this list and the ones from previous beta updates.

[h2]Change Log | 2023-08-31[/h2]
[h3]FEATURES[/h3]

New feature: Class Marks
- Class Marks allow you to pick traits from a different class
- To unlock a class mark you will need to finish the class master quests.
- Those quests require you to reach agony IV on the character's stage of origin.
- These quests superseed the character quests to reach level 100.
- If you have already completed the level 100 quests those quests will be set as completed.
New feature: Agony Mode
- Agony Mode can be unlocked by defeating the Lord of a stage.
- Monster count, monster health, and XP drops are dynamically scaled based on your performance
- Each killed enemy increases agony, while monsters that are alive reduce agony over time.
- Aside from monsters, only reviving reduces agony.
- You may find ‘Uncommon Items’: stronger variations of items that you’ve retrieved previously
- Additional champion monsters are spawning
- Champions are randomized monsters with extra modifiers and abilities.
- Champions can drop various rewards from ability scrolls, to uncommon items, gold, flasks, or an extra bucket for the well.
New stage: Frozen Depths
- Can be unlocked by defeating the frost knight on the Forgotten Viaduct.
- New unknown enemies await with 3 unique bosses and a new lord.
- The stage layout limits your movement and requires you to navigate carefully through the caves while avoiding getting encircled by foes.
New elemental effect: Frost
- Frost explodes and deals damage in an area when the affected monster dies or 20 stacks have been accumulated.
- If the frost effect runs out it triggers with only half of its damage.
- Frost deals damage based on the number of stacks.
- The strongest hit that applied frost determines the area of the effect.
New characters
- Norseman
  - Dual wielding axe fighter boosting your physical abilities.
  - When he hits a certain number of enemies he unleashes a devastating Frost Nova.
- Beast Huntress
  - Throws her spear with great force, piercing through the enemy lines and applying frost effect.
  - Has a hound that protects her from close enemies.
New abilities
- Ice Avalanche: an ice based attack with a diagonal pattern.
- Flame Strike: close quarter defense or boss killer.
- Arcane Rift: magic mines that deal devastating damage.
- Spirit Warrior: summoned warrior that dashes through enemies.
- Potion of Renewal: allows you to reroll abilities
- Hallucinogenic Elixir: allows you to reroll items in a chest

[h3]POLISH & QOL[/h3]

All final stage bosses have lower health but they increase in difficulty over time.
Potion of Oblivion now allows you to banish a trait without closing the trait selection.
Discarding all items in a chest gives you XP worth 50% of your current total XP bar.
You can now discard all abilities from a Scroll of Mastery which will also give you 50% XP of your current total XP bar.
Some fixes regarding item and monster positioning in level geometry
Picking up quest items or ingredients will show a short text telling you what you’ve picked up
Potion quantities have been adjusted (max amount and bottles)
Many more tweaks, adjustments, and bug fixes that would either go beyond the scope of this post or we didn’t track properly.
Retrieving potion bottles doesn’t use up the well any longer. Also, when you survive a run, all bottles in your bag will be automatically added to your potions (no purchase necessary).

If you want to see a more detailed listing of changes that happened while we were preparing this update, you can have a look at this forum thread:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/2218750/discussions/3/3801652762283956029/

[h2]What's Next?[/h2]
After this update we’ll have to monitor the game for a couple of days and make sure that there are no major problems. At the same time we are going to look at some of the QoL and accessibility issues many of you have pointed out and see if we can find fitting solutions for them. It may take a couple of iterations until we can address all of them. Of course we will also continue to work on more content, but our main focus for the next update will be more towards getting rid of some of the rough edges in the game.

We hope you’ll enjoy this update as much as we did!

Cheers! 🥕
Chasing Carrots

Tiny Teams Festival and a Thank You!

Greetings Champions!

First of all, thank you so much! Without you we couldn’t have advanced with Halls of Torment as we did. Over 500 000 players have played the game and each week more are coming. Your support, your feedback, and your participation in the beta means a lot to us. It allows us to improve the game every day and bring new and interesting content.

Since yesterday, there is the Tiny Teams Event that focuses on small teams just like us. We are having a 20% discount during this event, and if you want to help us, tell your friends about us. But maybe you want to help more tiny teams and explore hidden gems? Visit the Tiny Teams Festival!

https://store.steampowered.com/sale/tinyteamsfestival2023

Why is this important? The key point is diversity in the games market. Over 95% of all indie games never turn a profit. Small Indie devs often come by with contract work or work full-time jobs in order to finance their game development. If you want to see more games made by people who deeply care about them, browse through the festival and give those devs some of your attention. The organizers stream games 12 hours a day. This is a perfect place to find your next potential purchase.

We’re sure you’ll encounter some very interesting games, only few people have heard about.

Anyway, if you want to follow our latest updates, then visit the forums!
https://steamcommunity.com/app/2218750/discussions/3/3801652762283956029/

[h3]Have a nice weekend, whatever you do!
- Chasing Carrots[/h3]

HoT Beta Update | 2023-07-31 | Frozen Depths

Greetings Brave Souls!

We are ready to deploy a new build on the beta branch. This will be the base for the first big Halls of Torment update. Please be aware that this update is still under development. Most features are not yet finished, require further tuning or may change entirely.
We’ll give a short overview of the most important points. Generally while you will see wonky graphics or missing content, everything that has been included should be working. If you are finding any bugs or have any feedback, please visit either the Steam Forums or our official Discord.

More information & how to join: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2218750/view/3649655808283204317

[h2]Frozen Depths[/h2]
The new Stage can be unlocked by beating the Frost Knight on the Forgotten Viaduct. You’ve done that already? Great! You can jump right into action. The Frozen Depths are a system of caves that can be tricky to navigate through and are the core of the new update. New enemies and challenges will await you with many new unlocks… once they are ready.
While the stage is fully functional, aside from some monsters using dirty recolored sprites, the unlockable content is still to be done. This includes Blessings, new Traits, one of the new characters etc.

[h2]Norseman[/h2]
Can be unlocked through the Frozen Depths, a character focussing on quick melee attacks. The basic work is done and all Traits and attacks are as they should be. Missing are his quests, including all coming unlocks, especially new items that will be there for Synergies between his base play style.
Also the Ability that will accompany him is still to be done.

[h2]Character #9[/h2]
She will be coming in the next few weeks. She will be a huntress with a loyal beast on her side and ranged Ice attacks.

[h2]Flame Strike & Frost Avalanche[/h2]
We added two new base abilities that will be unlocked, once you can finish the quest to survive 8 minutes in the Ember Grounds. Both abilities are fully functional and we await feedback about them! Frost Avalanche is the base Ice Ability, starting with a diagonal attack pattern while the Flame Strike is a close range, single target, high damage skill. Both abilities will get visual upgrades further down the line.

[h2]Agony[/h2]
Agony is but the first step in making the game more challenging. It will start out just as the normal game and scales up based on your performance. When Agony mode is active following things will happen:

Randomized Champions will spawn and drop additional loot
Health and Enemy amount are increasing based on performance
Increased Gold rewards

The agony mode will also get new unlocks once we work out the kinks. For now your main focus will probably be on the drops of champions, as they will enable you more customization in the dungeon itself. You can find uncommon equipment, which are improved versions of regular equipment that can’t be retrieved. But not only that, champions can also drop bottles, ability scrolls and if you are lucky… a bucket?!

[h2]Frost Effect[/h2]
Adding frost will do at first no damage. But once the enemy dies, the Frost effect will deal damage based on the stacks on the enemy. The base damage is currently 100 per stacks. The range of the blast will depend on the strongest hit that has been dealt to the enemy. Stronger hits = bigger area!
Frost effects not only trigger when an enemy dies, but also when you would apply the 21st stacks. Frost stacks will dissipate when the enemy survives for 10 seconds without getting another Frost effect stack.

[h2]Other Additions and Changes[/h2]

Gold rewards when dying/winning now depend on the stage.
All lords now work by getting stronger over time and having reduced Health pools.
Reroll potions for abilities and items have been added.
Characters now get automatically some stats every level (defensive) / 10 levels (offensive).
Characters have more traits now that benefit specific play styles.
General balancing work on abilities and characters.
Piercing and Duration have been replaced by Force, which also boosts Knockback of melee attacks.
Item Balancing - Most items have seen a boost in strength.
All damage effects are now limited to 20 stacks. They trigger damage when trying to apply once again.
Fixing several smaller and bigger bugs.

This will be all for now. Please note that we’ll do many smaller updates during the test, but not all patches will get their own announcement on the steam page. So it’s worth looking into the Beta Forums or the Discord Server!

[h3]Stay Cool ❄️
- Chasing Carrots[/h3]

HoT Journal | 2023-07-27 | Update Beta Details

[h2]Greetings Champions![/h2]

It’s time for another small update. As we said in our last update, we’d still like to start the beta for the next big update in July, which we will do just right in time on Monday the 31st July. Today we want to talk about how you can participate in the update beta and what to expect. If things are unclear, please let us know.

[h3]Joining the Beta Branch[/h3]
You can freely join the Beta, by going into your games properties from the Steam library (right-click the game or “manage”). There will be a page called Betas where you can set the game version you want to play on.

You can freely switch between the live and beta version, but switching back to the live version might remove some progress from the save game. But usually the unlocked progress will simply not be available in previous versions (new stages, characters, items etc.)

[h3]Contents & State of the Beta[/h3]
When you join the beta, be aware that most features are not complete and content will get added over time. While most of the foundations are done and the addition of new parts will be quick, there are some points to be aware of.

Assets are not final and some content will be using place holders (enemies, items, abilities…)
Not all quests and unlocks will be added.
Unlocks bound to quests will automatically be available once the content gets added.
Content and balancing might be vastly reworked during the beta as many content items have not been tested in depth.
The beta is not feature complete, additional features will be finished during the beta.

[h3]Duration & Updates of the Beta[/h3]
We don’t have a fixed schedule, but depending on the progress and problems, we believe the beta will take 2-4 weeks for an update as big as this one. For the duration of the beta we’ll do irregular updates and not every update will get an additional announcement. Those changes will be added either to the previous beta notes or the steam forums.

[h3]Reporting & Communication for the Beta[/h3]
We added a sub forum to the Steam Forums, where we’ll share all information about the beta and encourage all reports and feedback for the beta branch to be posted in that forum.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/2218750/discussions/3/

Please note, the forum will be locked outside of beta phases.

You can also join the discord, we’ll also have a channel there to talk about the beta!
https://discord.gg/chasingcarrots

[h3]Beta Preview[/h3]
As many of you await new content, please allow me to give you a short list of content the beta will most likely start with! This may change as we are currently still preparing the beta content.

New stage “Frozen Depths”
Agony game mode (not final yet)
Balancing changes to characters, traits, items and abilities
Up to 2 of the 4 new abilities.
1 of the 2 new characters.
Many smaller changes and additions
Stability updates & engine upgrade

More details on all changes will be provided when the Beta starts!

[h3]New Achievements & Quests[/h3]
Yes, there will be new achievements alongside new quests. The new achievements will be added for the release of the update. If you participate in the beta and complete the connected quests beforehand, the achievements will unlock once you start the regular game after the patch release.

New quests will be added and modified during the beta. If any unlockable gets added retroactively to a quest, these will be made available without the requirement to finish the quest again. This does not apply to added or changed gold rewards.

Stay Fresh
- Chasing Carrots

Diablo 4 players are leaving to play Vampire Survivors style game

Halls of Torment caught my attention as soon as I saw it on the Steam storefront. It's one of those survival games that perfectly captures what makes other ground-breaking titles such as Diablo 4 and Vampire Survivors great. Halls of Torment blends its cast of heroes with hordes of monsters to create a fast-paced bullet hell appealing to fans of Blizzard's most recent ARPG. With overwhelmingly positive reviews on Steam and countless hours of playtime available to those interested in it, Halls of Torment is one indie release you won't want to miss.

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