Swordai News

[p]Join us this weekend (July 17-21) for Swordai playtest 6 and battle the upgraded Flame Acolytes, experience the new Endboss, duel Elder Xun, fight the updated Puppeteer, take the new Combat Trial, and much more.[/p][p][/p][p]Playtest 6 features everything from major QoL improvements, control improvements, optimization work to new enemies, new abilities, and new quests. The playtest will only run for 4 days so don't miss it![/p][p][/p][p][/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p][/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[p][/p][p]Playtest 6 will start on 7/17/2025 and features a ton of improvements based on your feedback and new content. [/p]

• [p]There is a new End boss with a massive persistent health pool (per region eg. NA/EU/ASIA). When a region defeats him, players who dealt damage to him will get special rewards based on their damage contribution.[/p]
• [p]A new "Combat Trial" has been added to the entrance, test your skills on the official leaderboards.[/p]

[p][/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p][/p]

• [p]Entrance redesign. Cultivation and ability crafting are now accessible in the tower entrance along with katas, the combat trial and other training modes. There are also new NPCs to duel.[/p]

[p][/p]

• [p]QoL and control improvements. Based on feedback from Playtest 5, I put a lot of work into the angle before click controls, fixed some bugs related to the turn cap and made dozens of other little tweaks to make the game feel smoother and more responsive. [/p]
• [p]Tutorial rework. The tutorial has been significantly expanded and improved to better teach the core combat system[/p]
• [p]AI improvements. In addition the the new end boss AI, all of the npcs have gotten a bit of an upgrade. You can see a sneak peak of the boss AI as it was being developed here:[/p]

[p][/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

• [p]And much more, see discord for full patch notes.[/p]

[h3]Major Updates and New Features[/h3]
This patch contains all the new features for playtest 5 which starts on 4/30/2025. Between now and then I will just be working on bug fixes and QoL.

Bosses: There are two new bosses, the Basalt Golem in the tier 1 area and the Ice Wraith in the tier 2 area.



Swords: You can now loot unique swords by killing enemies or looting chests. There are different types of swords (claymores, longswords, etc) and within each type there are randomized stats (damage, charge speed, swing speed, etc). The swords have a chance to have an "Awakened" property and can be upgraded.

Awakening swords is something you do within a single tower climb, each run your sword starts unawakened and you can stack its awakened buff by doing a specific thing. Some swords awaken by killing other players, or claiming blessings, or looting chests, etc.

To upgrade your weapon you will need to kill enough monsters with it to fully charge it with essence. Then take it to an upgrade table and supply the required materials and it will get a random buff.



Reconnect: If you disconnect your character will now stay where they are in game and you can reconnect. Having your internet connection go out will no longer mean losing all your loot.

The meta loadout: After extensive dueling with Lome I think we are both of the opinion that the meta loadout for this playtest will use Winter's Chill and Shatter to provide slows, Wrath for its overall combat power, mist step in the dodge slot, and Disrupting Kiai, along with the standard Kick and Combo-parry. You can see a us dueling with that build here:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Misc: There are tons of other new things to check out such as, a new ore type (glacial ore) the ice cave now has 6 blessing shrines and is (slightly) easier to navigate, lots of AI and performance tweaks, a bunch of QoL and bug fixes, etc.

I can't wait to play with you all next week!

[h3]Major Updates and New Features[/h3]
A pretty substantial update today containing some significant progress on items and loot as well as some performance optimization and an engine update to UE 5.5. Because of the engine update the download for this patch will be big as most of the files change.

Amulets: Introduced a new gear item, amulets, which give a damage absorbing shield that recharges rapidly when out of combat.



Selling: You can now sell items to the sect quartermaster.



Trading: You can now trade with other players



Sword Kill Tracking: Swords now track how many enemies they have killed. In the future this will tie into the system for upgrading them.



DLSS 4: Added DLSS 4 and multi-framegen support



Optimization: Did a fair amount of optimization work. Also added toggle for many performance effecting features as well as 240 and 360 fps cap options.



Combo Feint: You can now hit feint during the combo window and stop your attack at that point.
Tutorial Flask: The Lost Soul in "Beginnings" now drops a simple flask the first time you kill him. For existing players that have killed him before, he will appear to drop two flasks but only one will be stashed. For anyone killing him for the first time everything will work as expected.

Thanks as always for all the feedback, particularly on the performance related items. It is invaluable—thank you for being an integral part of this journey! Stay tuned for the next update.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2321890/Swordai/

[h3]Major Updates and New Features[/h3]
This patch has a ton of changes and additions so I'll be a bit less detailed than usual in these patch notes and won't cover every single change. This is part 1 of a 3 part loot/crafting update that will include swords, amulets, uprading/enchanting and two major new sword mechanics. A significant portion of the work for this patch went into adding new UI for things like vendors, loadout selection, quests, etc. You can duel any vendor in the game and get access to special items if you defeat them.

• Unequip: Added the ability to unequip and equip swords, this includes animations for running around with no weapon. The new animations use UE5s motion matching system which I didn't use before so I'll need to do some performance benchmarking on that, but I think it looks nice.
  
• Crouch: Added crouch, you cannot fight from crouched. The default key is Z. When crouched your footsteps are silent so you can use it to sneak up on people
  
  
  
  
• Loadout UI: Added a system for choosing your loadout when entering the tower so that you can change your ability loadout and chose what equipment to bring with you at the entrance portal.
  
  
  
  
• Vendors: Added a system for npc vendors / quest givers. You can buy stuff from them. You can also duel any of them. Right now there is just one, the tower quartermaster.
  
  
  
  
• The Mines: Added the a new beginner friendly zone called the mines. Right now there is just a small area where you can mine ore and the rest is closed off. It won't be fully ready for a while.
  
  
  
  
• Sword Stats: Added a sophisticated system for swords to have special effects. Right now each of the swords in the weapon rack has an example effect. You can mouse over to read them.
  
• Borrowed Items: Updated the weapon rack to give you "borrowed" swords that can be used but cannot be brought through portals or into the tower.
  
  
  
  
• Mouse Responsiveness: Added an option to disable the camera smoothing and made having it disabled the default. I think the mouse movement will feel more responsive.
  
• Animation Quality: changed the npcs to run at a higher tick rate locally but the same tick rate on the server. This should make npc animations a bit easier to read.
  
• Achievements: Added new achievements for blocks per minute that must be done on 6 direction + random mode. There is an achievement for 50 blocks per minute and 60. I've only gotten 57 so far but one player has already gotten to 60.
  
  
  
  
• Cleave: Fully charged attacks now cleave through multiple opponents, each hit opens a new combo window (or resets it if the previous has not expired).
  
• Crippling Kiai: Deleted "Cleaving Kiai" as it is now the default behavior. Replaced it with "Crippling Kiai" which makes your kiai attacks slow the person you hit.
  
• Entrance Instancing: Added support for multiple instances of the tower entrance within a region, this is part of a goal to make the entrance have a lot more stuff (quests, crafting, duels, trading, marketplace, etc.)
  
• Tower Tokens: Added a system for using "tower tokens" to enter the tower. Your "tower token" controls your start location within the tower (and in the future certain tokens will give buffs).
  
  
  
  [h3]Miscellaneous[/h3]
  
• Added katas to the entrance
  
• A lot of UI QoL, eg you can click on an item to use it for crafting instead of dragging. Lots of little things like that
  
• Fixed crash issue with traversing red portals when being attacked
  
• A lot of minor bug fixes.
  

[h3]What's next?[/h3]

This is the first major chunk of what I have planned for adding meaningful loot and a quest/story progression. I won't get into the details of the quests, but loot wise, the next steps will be.

• Awakening: The next major mechanic for swords will be "awakening" conditions. A big challenge for extraction looters is balancing making gear feel meaningful without making it feel like vets are just gear checking new players. An idea I've had in mind for some time is to have the higher end swords start off very weak and "awaken" incrementally throughout a tower run when certain sword specific conditions are met. So a simple example would be a sword that gains base damage each time you go through a red portal. It would be weaker than a normal sword in the beginning areas but very strong against the puppeteer. Experienced players don't need a good sword in the early game anyways and this keeps them from running around 1-tapping noobs.
  
• Shields: And by that I mean magic shields not physical ones. Another area I want to improve is how health feels in the game. I've been having trouble finding the right balance of healing within the game so that getting hit every now and then doesn't feel terrible, while at the same time making your HP feel precious (so not resetting to full after each fight). I've decided to have the 3rd gear item (amulets) that will give you a "shield" which will absorb X damage, after which damage will start reducing your health. Your shield will automatically recharge if you are out of combat (and not sprinting) for a fairly short time. Then I will significantly reduce the amount of healing in the game. Better amulets will give bigger shields, or shields with special effects.
  
• Loot tables: After that I'll go through and add loot tables for swords / amulets to all NPCs and change their swords to match their play styles. Right now there are some significant mismatches (most notably with the Othari, where they are using a sword that favors riposte based offense, but they hardly ever block).
  

As always, your feedback is invaluable—thank you for being an integral part of this journey! Stay tuned for the next update, and I hope you enjoy exploring these new features and improvements.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2321890/Swordai/