Blade & Sorcery News

Hello mates! Baron here with some end of the year news and a little skills preview as promised from the upcoming 1.0 Crystal Hunt release next year.

As mentioned in many other news, Crystal Hunt is going to be the long-awaited "Progression Mode" for Blade & Sorcery, and a big component of that progression is the development of the player character via their skills.

Let's get into it!

When we say "skills", we mean legit unlocking some new feature. We were very dead set against following the common game design cliché of a skill tree where you unlock a new skill and get "+5 damage" or things like that.

On our skill tree each unlock is unlocking something new to mix up how you can play, whether it be a new spell, an augmentation for a spell to change how it works, or even something that pertains to swordfighting or archery.

That includes unarmed too!



We were really, really adamant that we didn't wanna do a gamey skill tree that was nothing but boring number crunch, so this was non-negotiable for Warpfrog.

On this note, we currently have 78 skills.

Yes, it is indeed madness and it keeps me awake at night, lol. When Lyneca told me we were cramming this much new content into the Skill Tree I was gripped with terror because I am calling it now that our QA time for this many skills is going to surely be hell, but at least since this is 1.0 and "the big one" it will be cool to go out with a bang. ːpraisesunː

Some of these skills are stuff you already know but broken off into their own unlockable, for example the regular fireball, or the regular lightning, etc. But the vast majority is new stuff.



In the beginning of the game, the player character is completely skill-less. That means all the spells and OP stuff you know from the years of Early Access Sandbox game are stripped from the player and the player is literally just a sword or archery warrior.

As player completes dungeon runs in Crystal Hunt, you will begin to unlock things on the Skill Tree and develop your character in any of the five Skill Paths - Fire, Lightning, Gravity, Body and Mind.

While Fire, Lightning and Gravity are obvious enough, the Body Path pertains to physical prowess and swordfighting skills, while Mind refers to things like focus (slow motion, base telekinesis upgrades, etc).

Each path has three tiers and generally speaking the T1 unlocks tend to be the skills that you will be most familiar with from Early Access, T2 skills tend to be something new, and T3 tend to be the big merge skills.



There are also a few multipath skills, such as having a certain tier of Fire and a certain tier of Gravity will unlock some new special combination skill.

Particularly with these cross-elemental skills they can be the most devastating late game spells, and although they are composed of familiar elements, generally they are something completely new altogether.



Some of the skills will be augmentations for other skills you have already unlocked.

This is where it can get really, really whacky; a big component of the skill tree is about synergy, which is to say, how different skills play off each other. You will find that skill effects will compound and stack, and because of the physics simulation factor you may find they stack and can be utilized in cool or novel ways if you are creative!



With so many new skills and effects in the game, if you were to unlock them all at the same time you might hardly recognize the EA game because there is just so much going on, lol. But for this reason we tried our absolute best to make it so no new skill changes how the game plays on a fundamental level.

We tried our best on the controls side to keep everything either naturally intuitive or familiar to how the EA base game operated.



To give an example, we all know the regular fireball, but if one was to use the new skill "Remote Detonation", this allows player to explode the fireball mid air, so the controls are simply casting the fireball as usual and then the new part is pulling the trigger to make it explode.

So as you can see, it adds a little layer on top of the familiar controls without doing anything too radically unfamiliar, like suddenly needing gestures or new button combos to operate.

Nonetheless, if you were to have every single skill unlocked all at the same time, it could be quite overwhelming once things start stacking!



However, it is unlikely to be the case that a player would have everything unlocked all at the same time; it is not fully balanced right now, but the idea is that by the time an average player gets to the end of Crystal Hunt, they will more than likely have unlocked something like two full Skill Paths, plus some change.

The idea is that the game encourages the player to go down particular Paths and specialize, so by the end of the Crystal Hunt the player should have some type of character that is excellent at something, such as being able to say "I am a Gravity Mage" with a few extra random skills too.

This will hopefully encourage the player to replay the game again later and try some new type of character playthrough style.



Of course if you kept doing dungeon runs in Crystal Hunt you could theoretically max out every Skill Path and become a master at everything. Surely some madlads will certainly do this, but the average player is unlikely to.

When it comes to Sandbox mode however, in the dev menu we will add individual toggles to unlock anything from the start so that in Sandbox you can pick and choose precisely what you want to play with. Maybe you will wanna go crazy and unlock everything all at once, or maybe you will only want the familiar EA skills loadout but perhaps with one or two augmentations, etc.

We are adding this unrestricted approach to sandbox because if someone wants to have everything from the start to mess around with, that is their business; we don't believe in telling players how they should be having fun.



Now let's go a layer deeper!

Another mechanic that has been added to the game is the inclusion of "status effects".

If you recall the old lightning, when you zapped an enemy with lightning they were stunned for a moment; this is essentially an expansion of that. Enemy can now suffer status effects for all elements, such as being set on fire or made weightless.



There are also some status effects for the Body Path skills, but we will leave that for you to discover yourself later.

If the above flamethrower gif was making you wonder how staffs are going to work in conjunction with the Skill Tree, staffs will still get their usual imbue slam abilities for free, but you will be able to unlock powerful new skills for the staff too.

My wish was fulfilled that I can now play as Saruman. ːwftogrinː



Last little note, these skill trees are modder friendly!

We designed it in such a way that modders should be able to add their own entirely new skill trees into Crystal Hunt so that players could unlock modder skills in a progression mode fashion. This should prove to be cool if any modder was to add a thematic skill tree pack because it should slot into the vanilla game really nicely to compliment Crystal Hunt mode. ːsteamdanceː

That about does it for the Skills I think! There is much to discover and more detail to go into but I don't want to spoil too much.

As you all know, this content will be in the 1.0 release and for those wondering about when the 1.0 release is, the answer is we are not sure. We are still praying for a Q1 2024 release but there is a massive chance of that not becoming reality; our goal was to be feature complete by December and then use Q1 to polish and bugfix over a lengthy QA period, but it is end of December now and I can confirm we have lots of (in some cases worryingly large) features incomplete.

This means the extra dev time required to finish features is gonna ripple into our bugfixing time and that means everything is gonna get pushed back as a result. Compound that with the massive amount of new content that is gonna need robust QA testing and you can see why I say it doesn't seem unlikely that development could push into Q2. For this reason it is best for us to continue our policy of not committing to any specific release date, because we just don't know for sure!

That is it for the end of the year news, guys! From everyone at Warpfrog, thank you for the continued support and we hope you guys all have a wonderful holidays and New Year! ːlunar2019piginablanketː

Cheers!

Hello mates! The Baron here with the latest news and I am joyed to say... The Road to 1.0 begins! ːpraisesunː

This is a bittersweet news for me because in theory this will likely be the last "Road to" major update news for Blade & Sorcery, as the next stop is going to be 1.0, full release. Can you believe it has been almost 5 years??

Blade & Sorcery started out as a small arena wave fighter in 2018, and since then has massively outgrown its original conception. Through the incredible love and support of you guys who backed us and believed in us, a studio was born.

As a result, the little arena game that could has been overhauled and expanded in scope twice in the past 5, with 4 of those years being extended early access development. Some of you absolute legends have been with us since 2018 and have followed along with each update, watching the simulation grow bigger as more features get added; the ups, the downs, the mods breaking, lol.

Well, for this final update the Warpfrog team are putting everything we have into the 1.0 Crystal Hunt / Progression Mode update and it will be our biggest update yet. We hope to do you guys proud. ːp2cubeː

Now, let's take a peek at what is coming in 1.0!

[h2]Crystal Hunt, aka "Progression Mode"[/h2]

Something that would come up again and again from players was a wish that there was "a point" to Dungeons; that the player have something they are working towards to add a sense of progression or completion to the game.

In the past this was beyond our scope of feasibility, but since 2018 we have expanded the Warpfrog team to 21 fulltime and 6 part-time staff so that we would have the capability to make this hypothetical progression gamemode a reality.



This was actually really freaking tricky for us, lol.

The original game was a pure simulation sandbox, so huge swathes of the mechanics and features were already developed and in place; to add a progression mode meant now adding a more gamey mode that complimented those already developed mechanics - this is unusual because it was like game designing backwards.

However, thanks to the much expanded team compared to the early days, we were able to retool our brains for this task and create Crystal Hunt; a gamemode that has progression, but is not too gamey. A story, but is not a full blown RPG or railroaded experience.

What Crystal Hunt is composed of exactly is basically three components: A story / player motive, a new dungeon biome, and a new gamemode, which I will now delve into all three.

[h2]The Story[/h2]

The Dalgarians: An obscure and ancient race of people from millennia ago.

Supposed masters of magic, little is actually known of them beyond folktale and hearsay, as ancient history became myth and legend through the annals of time.

Indeed, for most common folk the only undeniable evidence of their existence at all is the unmistakable mark they left behind on the landscape of Byeth: The Tower.

Perched on a small island atop the Khemenic Sea, the Dalgarian tower resides... inaccessible due to the raging magical storm that permanently surrounds it.

Its contents, unknown. Its purpose, lost through time. Countless foolhardy adventurers have lost their lives in futile attempts to penetrate the storm. Even merchant ships trading between Eraden and Khar-Tib will sail for miles and miles around the storm than brave going near it, with exception perhaps of the few daring Sentari sailors whose famed reputation for seamanship rises from skirting the edge of the storm.

And so, the secrets of the Dalgarians have gone undisturbed for centuries.

But something has happened.. Buried deep in the rugged landscapes of Byeth, ancient Dalgarian ruins have revealed themselves. Their massive doors have inexplicably swung open to reveal passage to the crumbling halls swallowed by otherwise non-traversable mountains.





The first pioneers who dared brave these halls unearthed a slew of archeological findings on the Dalgarians; incredible structures with magical integration like non-other.

But more so, another fantastical prize was revealed; at the depth of the chambers, a source of ancient magical power was unearthed... what folk simply refer to as "the Crystal".

So began the great Crystal Hunt.



Within weeks, powerful factions of Eraden began mobilizing their forces in an attempt to seek out and secure the entrances to these Dalgarian chambers and their treasures within, occupying crumbling outposts of the old world as forward operating bases while they comb out across the landscape.



Due to the corrupting effect of magic on humankind, unsanctioned magic in Eraden is illegal. As such, some such as the Queen of Eraden seek containment of the Crystals, whilst others like the magic-obsessed cult, The Eye, obsessively seeks its consumption.

Enter the player; just one of many swept up into the Crystal Hunt adventure, but unlike others, has been tasked with a special quest given by the obscure Dalgarian Archeological Society.

Seeking more than the magical powers the crystals provide, The Society are dubious and assembling a bigger picture of these recent events.

They seek answers; the timing of the Dalgarian chambers revealing themselves, the crystals, and the most burning question in all of Byeth: What are the secrets of the Dalgarian Tower?

[h2]About Lore[/h2]

If you follow any Warpfrog social medias, you may have seen me mention how I am always apprehensive to use the word "storyline" in this game, even though there actually is a storyline.

The reason I am trepid to use the word "story" and downplay it is because I never want to accidentally imply that the game will be an RPG with NPC characters, dialogue choices, or some kind of big omniscient narration that guides the player through a on-tracks experience.

Relevant to everything to do in game design, we feel that there has been a unsatisfying trend in modern gaming which is to spoon-feed players, and hit them over the head with a hammer to make sure the player "gets it".

For us, we have always harkened back to an older era of gaming in the late 90s and early 2000s where instead of endless UIs, overdone tutorials and waypoints up the wazoo there was some emphasis put on players using their brains not just to complete the game, but to actually figure out the boundaries of game itself through experimentation, trial and error.

This can create niche appeal, but the cool part is that when you find your audience who love it, they will tend to love it, and these folks may find gaming experiences like this more meaningful and memorable as they grow older. This is in contrast to the more modern trend where many games will try to appeal to everyone with very middling-impact, broad and soft strokes; following tried and tested popular trends that are lukewarm enough to content the masses whilst avoiding upsetting anyone.

We have always rejected this approach in lieu of giving the player more benefit of the doubt that they are capable and motivated to explore the game and its boundaries, and our vibe is if you like this in a video game then that is cool, and if you don't like it that is okay too. So when it comes to our lore and story, our approach is no different.

Without any kind of handholding narrator to act as guide, the first way a player might explore our worldbuilding is through environmental storytelling. This is conclusions through inference; for example, if you walked into a bedroom and saw an ashtray and cigarettes on a desk, you might infer the person is a smoker.



Similarly for us, the use of environmental storytelling in the exploration of Dalgarian ruins will be based on your inferral of our environments. No one will come along and tell you that you are right or wrong, but something I am really secretly hoping and looking forward to is for there to be times when the community pool together their theories and discoveries about our world.

The second way a player can absorb lore is much more direct - via written text or images. This could be literally a written note the player finds from one of the Crystal Hunt factions, or it could even be some ancient text found in a Dalgarian ruin itself.

But maybe you understand us enough by now to know, even that is not something we would make too straightforward. ːwftogrinː

If it were to be a cohesive world and make sense, then ancient texts by the Dalgarians would be written in, well.. Dalgarian!



That means, break out your cipher! I'm actually not joking lol. ːwizardː

By now you can maybe understand that there is potential for different player experiences playing Blade and Sorcery.

If you are the kind of player who just wants to casually fight your way through the game but would enjoy some kind of motivation to get you through to an ending, then you can absolutely positively play Crystal Hunt this way. You can take the game at face value and there will be a propelling force to get you to the end of the game. You will have a good time and enjoy the game as a straight up action game.

Alternatively if you are the kind of player who enjoys worldbuilding and a more demanding gaming experience, then is an option there for you to dig deeper for a self-guided tour of our deep lore. For some, the digging and discovery is the reward itself, but in fact if you are this kind of player you may find your reflection upon the game world is altered, and have a different experience to other players.

Or, you may be a player who enjoys something somewhere in between. ːsteamdanceː

For anyone wondering about the Dalgarian stone tablet above, yes it can be translated and probably won't be not too difficult for anyone experienced in ciphers. But do note this was just an early day test message for us messing around, so the font above is now outdated compared to the final game, plus the final game cipher may be a little trickier. ːtmntdonː

[h2]The Dalgarian Dungeons[/h2]

Now let's get into the actual Dalgarian Dungeons themselves; if you have played "Outpost" then you will probably have a good idea what to expect.

The Dalgarian Dungeon is an entirely new dungeon biome and set of rooms. Everything was hand designed from the ground up to tailor to our story.



This has been a huge project undertaking for the environment team at Warpfrog, as they were tasked to build out an entirely new Dungeon on the same scope as Outpost, but unlike Outpost which is very medieval-inspired in design, the Dalgarian Dungeons required a full blown novel art direction to create something entirely new, ancient and mystical feeling.





The dungeon room pool size will be approximately akin to Outpost in room count; I believe at the the moment there is about Dalgarian 40 rooms compared to Outpost's 60. But one thing you will notice compared to Outpost is how absolutely massive some of these rooms are.

The ancient Dalgarians' architecture is a whole different animal compared to the modern structures of Byeth, so when it came to level design we really wanted to emphasize that. What is really missing from these preview images is a human for reference of scale, but maybe that is better because hopefully it will make your first VR visit here special to see it for yourself.



You absolutely need to see these rooms in VR to appreciate the job the enviro team did at making them look gorgeous. As always, we are continuing to support and push PCVR to its limits.

Although much of the dungeon biome is interior, there are also some (enclosed) exterior locations to give some vibe of the massive mountain canyon passes the ruins are hidden in.





How the Dalgarian Dungeon fits into the story and gameplay will be revealed when you play Crystal Hunt.

There are some dungeon specific mechanics and others surprises in store for these areas, but we will save that for another day. ːtmntdonː

[h2]Crystal Hunt Gamemode[/h2]

Now for the main meat and potatoes; Crystal Hunt is the new progression gamemode, so here is how it will work:

When you start the game you can make a separate character for each gamemode.

For sandbox mode, everything is unlocked right from the start - all maps, weapons, armours, all dev cheats, mods, and we will even see about adding an option so you can pick and choose about adding the crystal hunt skills to your sandbox character. This would totally spoil unlocking skills legitimately in Crystal Hunt, but that's up to you.

In the same vein, we have thought a bunch about usage of mods in Crystal Hunt and have decided that the best thing to do would be allow mods, but we will splash a disclaimer to give you a heads up you are likely to ruin the experience, or potentially even bork your save. Our vibe is if you wanna run through Crystal Hunt with a handgun or give yourself unlimited crystals you are definitely gonna break the game experience as we intended, but hey, that is up to you to decide.

For Crystal Hunt mode your character starts as a nobody, stripped of everything. No magic, no weapons, etc. By the time you get to the end of Crystal Hunt, your character will (in theory) will have progressed in power that you are more powerful like the sandbox character, and beyond.

As you progress through the gamemode, you will find loot which is currency you can use to buy things from a shop, and crystals which you will use to unlock new skills as well as progress through the game to reach the ending.

The story will be fed through lore the player can find in game, the depth of which is completely up to the player and their engagement with the material. A player can choose to ignore everything related to lore and still complete the game.

Now let's break down what this all means:

[h3]The Crystal[/h3]

This will be what the whole Crystal Hunt gamemode is all about; the most valuable resource you can find in Crystal Hunt mode is the crystal itself which comes in two varieties, Crystal Shards and Crystal Cores.

Crystal Shards are a smaller, less powerful source of magic in the world of Byeth. Being more commonly found in nature and less destructive, they are usually used by sanctioned sorcerers of the courts, though local folk will sometimes utilize them to perform a couple of parlor tricks. (in secret of course, given magic is not allowed in Eraden!)

In game terms, the shards will be used to unlock new skills from the skill tree.



Then there are the much sought after Crystals Core themselves.

These are the very rare resource found in the Dalgarian ruins and what you and everyone else is chasing. Crystal Cores can be siphoned of their magical power to make a sorcerer more powerful.

In game terms, this is the currency you will use to unlock new skills branches, which you can then invest your shards.

Crystal cores can be also be merged to unlock even more powerful tiers.





In this way you could say that sorcerers who have a lot Crystal Shards may be more robust magicians, but those with Crystal Cores will be more powerful magicians.

[h3]Skill Tree[/h3]

The skill tree is the main component to how you progress in power in Crystal Hunt.

Since U10, an age old questions for Blade & Sorcery has been "What is the obelisk thing in the Home?"

While some of you guys were stuffing cups and other stuff in the holsters (lol) a few of you guessed it - I can officially reveal the obelisk is where you will unlock your skills.

Crystal Cores can be placed in the obelisk slots to unlock the progression UI; functionally it is working, but sadly it still a bit too WIP that I don't have any nice video previews of this interaction yet. When we add some nice vfx to it I can post some previews.

As for the skills themselves; I know many folks are dying to know what are the actual skills, because we have been so tight lipped about it.

Some of you guys may have been secretly worried that we were maybe gonna stuff the skill tree with boring +10 this or +10 that. If you did, repent heathen!



Our skill tree is stuffed with actual content! ːpraisesunː

There are no boring number crunches (except for as you grow in magic power your magic casting gets faster) and each skill on the tree is either a new feature to unlock or an enhancement / augmentation of current feature.

[EDIT: Little edit here to clarify - there are no new element features but rather augmentations to gravity, fire and lightning]

This basically means you have ways to change the behaviors of spells you are familiar with - for example, adding an ability to bounce your fireballs off walls, set enemy on fire, suspend yourself in the air with gravity, or create chain lightning effects between enemy metallic armours.



The player starts off Crystal Hunt as a powerless character; even the basic lightning, fire and gravity spells you know from sandbox are stripped.

As you progress, you will choose what you want to unlock and invest in, so you will design your character build as you go. You could invest in a little bit of everything to be a broad character, or you could dump all your skills points into one tree branch and become a specialized type of character, like a fire mage, gravity mage, or even just a physical melee guy.

The skills can range from both magical powers to physical abilities.



To give an idea of how crazy we went with the skill tree, if you were to recreate the sandbox player as you would know it, that would account for approximately 20% of skill tree. The rest is new content. (I say approx because we are not finalized) It's madness, yes.

Although I'm showing clips of magic here, there is also a Body branch on the skill tree, which is oriented towards more melee favouring builds.

Unfortunately this is still undeveloped right now so I have not much to preview for it, but for now enjoy this one sneak peek at a Body skill -



There is enough content in the skill tree alone to justify its own news, so at a later date we can return to this and do a deep dive into skills with more previews. ːsteamdanceː

[h3]Loot[/h3]

A big component of Crystal Hunt is the loot you are gathering in Dungeons. Loot will go into your inventory to be later be sold to purchase weapons and armour.

Fair warning is that this is still something under heavy design development right now, so some stuff I may say here can be subject to change --

At the moment the concept is that loot can be hidden in the dungeons in containers, most likely in side rooms. The idea there is to give just a little incentive that the player who explores may get a little extra pocket change.

We are aiming to avoid that annoying modern game trend of loot spam, where you are on autopilot just spamming the pickup key. We would rather that finding loot is more rare like actually finding treasure.

You can also find loot at the end of Dungeon runs as a little reward, but it will be actual physical stuff you loot from a stash and not just a gamey mechanic of gold awarded from thin air.



In the gif above please note that it is just an internal test of containers and loot. How it will be presented in the actual game is still tbd. The tests are working pretty well though and it feels nice opening containers and looting!

[h3]The Shop[/h3]

You've probably heard "The Shop" being mentioned a bunch of times in the context of Crystal Hunt, but likely everyone else, you probably never really knew what to expect.

A few people have thought that by "shop" we meant some kind of book or UI menu used to purchase stuff, kind of like how you can spawn things in the book in sandbox -- Not at all!

Our shop is an actual shop (but with a possibly unexpected cosmetic twist) where you can buy things by physically taking them from the shelf and taking them to a counter to purchase.

Needless to say, it was incredibly difficulty to design a VR shop experience while adhering to our stubborn refusal to implement any UIs and other gamey elements, lol. ːer_sweatː



The shop will also be something you can invest your loot money in to upgrade the store and expand the purchase selection.

There are other surprises too, but I'll leave it at that for now!

[h2]New Armours[/h2]

What else in 1.0 besides Crystal Hunt you say?

The upper tiers of armour have finally been implemented into the game both for player and enemies.
Check out these Rogue (leather) and Officer (plate) armours:



The Officer armour is particularly freaking hard to fight against as it is full coverage, minus some small gaps. This means unless you are particularly finessed with a blade, blunt weapons and magic (especially electricity!) are better for dealing with these guys.



For the player, there are some gameplay mechanics coming with armours too.

A player who opts for a less protective "wizard build" attire can now actually reap some benefit to doing this beyond just looking cool.

Certain wizard gear and staffs will grant spellcasting speed boosts, which means playing as a full blown spell slinging wizard is now a very legitimate option, albeit at the cost of being more fragile to damage.

[h2]New Weapons[/h2]

Not including shields or anything like that, did you know there are already 38 weapons in vanilla U12 Blade & Sorcery??? I mention this just because I often read people say that Blade & Sorcery has "like 5 weapons" and I am always like wtf who first peddled this misinformation, lol. ːeaglegagː

Finally coming in 1.0 are the last of the tiered weapons!

Not counting new shields or arrows or anything like that, there are 37 new weapons being added, which beings the total to 75 weapons for 1.0. ːlunar2019piginablanketː There is a huge chance I miscounted the amount of new weapons or that we may add or remove to that before release lol, but my ballpark will be about right.



These are weapons covering just about everything, from swords, axes and polearms, to staffs and bows; finally we have different arrow types too!



"Tiered weapons" is referring to the weapon qualities which range from the lower poor quality weapons to fancy upper tier ones. However we are trying make all weapons functional - I am always harping on at Warpfrog about the concept that a player should be able to complete the game with a rusty dagger if they so choose.

A common gamey design is something like "low quality weapon = low damage" which then promotes a very linear progression concept that X weapon is objectively better than Y weapon because X does more damage. Or that you *need* X weapon by the end of the game because it is the only weapon capable of dealing with the level scaling of enemies, etc. ːsteamboredː



We always sought to avoid this, so instead of a very obvious mechanic such as better weapons = better damage, we are trying for a more latent benefit to higher tiers, such as "functional benefit"; while you could kill any enemy with a rusty dagger, the higher quality weapons may have functional appeal such as extended lengths, hilts, better piercing and penetration of leather, extra stabbing points, etc.

One direct benefit for upper tier weapons however is that they hold a magical imbue longer.

[h2]Ruins Rework[/h2]

Perhaps a little surprise for you - everyone's least favourite map got a major rework!



The Ruins sandbox map was the second map introduced into the game and was built from store bought Unity assets.

In the "Playstation 2 graphics" (as our early day fans would tease ːsteamdeadpanː ) era of the game, the quality of the Ruins was more acceptable in comparison to the rest of the game, but it always bugged the hell out of us, and then intolerably so after the graphics quality improved in U8.

It was long overdo an update.



A little secret roadmap item we have had was this revamp of Ruins for 1.0.

It is a complete makeover in graphics and layout, and the map is deceptively huge. However it still has all the hallmarks of the original ruins, such as the verticality and dark tone.

Don't worry, there is still a chandelier! ːspiffoː

[h2]Factions[/h2]

A low-key change coming is how enemy are presented in the game. Traditionally, the game has always classed factions by their attire, eg gladiator / bandit / mercenary / knight.

We have reworked this so enemy loadouts now better represent the Crystal Hunt factions instead of just their outfit, whether that faction be soldiers of Eraden or sorcerers of The Eye, etc.



This means there could be a spread of outfits with mix-matching in each faction, although you may be more likely to find armoured enemy in the Queen of Eraden's faction for example.



How this translates to the gameplay is that enemy difficulty is now no longer tied to outfits; where before if you wanted to see armoured knights in Outpost, you always needed to play on hard difficulty.

Now it is simply the factions themselves that will determine the difficulty, with some factions tougher than others. Beware The Eye!

[h2]Quality of life changes and other little things[/h2]

Very much this is the "miscellaneous" category; there are lots of small bits and bobs that will be included in the final update.

Most of this stuff we will leave for the release notes, but to give you some examples these would be things like dev cheats, new options, or little QOL tweaks to mod manager, etc.

One notable example, an "uninstall all" button for removing all mods!



The importance of this was not completely evident until one day a player noted he was manually removing all his mods for U12.3 - not a big deal... until he pointed out he had 147 mods installed! ːsteamlaughcryː To that guy - this is for you, lol.

This change should majorly help when you need to clear out all your mods in one sweep.

Another example of miscellaneous items could be micro features, which is to say low-risk, small features that were easy enough to implement without adding dev time, and more importantly without needing too much QA time.

For example, hip quivers.



The full list of what will be included here will continue to be incomplete right up to release and is very much the "let's see" category.

[h2]Other Surprises[/h2]

Of course! You know we can't resist.



[h2]Release Date[/h2]

And now, the million dollar question, when is this all available....

Here is the truth: we don't know! There is so many things half done, so many things not even started, loads of broken things, and let alone we still have the dreaded QA period ahead of us.

The currently estimated ballpark for release is Q1 2024 - we arrived at this ballpark by calculating on paper how much time we think we may need to complete the features, but that absolutely positively does not mean the release date is going to be Q1 2024 guaranteed.

The reason: there is just no possible way to say what can or will go wrong, and stuff always goes wrong.

Here is a random sampling of an inexplicable Monday morning "nah not happening today bro" bug so you can see what I mean:



Any date we give you right now is truly just an estimate based on paper calculations, so please don't be locked into thinking there is any definitive release date or believe any misinformation you might hear about this.

We also wanna protect our staff and continue to avoid Warpfrog utilizing the "crunch time" culture which is a toxic presence in game development. So please guys, don't be upset if we miss our ballpark or have to reassess later down the line. We are trying our best!

The only time you can be sure of a release date is when we drop the 1.0 trailer, which is usually just before the update is ready. And the only reason you can be sure of that release date is because at that point we will already be confident the update is more or less ready to release.

I know lots of you guys are dying for the release and have waited a long time, but hang in there. We wanna make it good. ːsteamdanceː

---

That's it for the Road to 1.0 news!

Thank you to everyone who has shown love and support towards our game and studio, and to all the kindness the playerbase show our dev team.

It is a real morale booster for the whole team. ːer_heartː

Hello mates! After a long time struggling with some frustrating tech issues, the Warpfrog team finally have gotten U12.3 ready for release. ːpraisesunː

Besides general U12 bugfixes, the most notable fix is Pico players will now have access to the mod manager. Sorry for this delay to those effected - the issue was to do with authentication on Pico working different from other headsets and the long story short is it was a pain in the butt to get working but it should be all good now. If you are a Pico player, do take note however that even though the we uploaded the update, it can take a while for it to actually appear to the players as available - this is because Pico do their own approval process for each update which is something Steam/Meta don't.

Another notable fix is for mod manager in general; we made a surprising discovery of an insidious bug in mod manager that surfaced when some folk from the community pointed out that a certain mod (Adammantium’s Multiplayer Mod) was not showing up in a mod manager search despite it being uploaded on modio and also showing up on the website. This was curious so it led us down a rabbit hole to discover why, only to make the shocking revelation that there were a bunch of mods were not showing up in mod manager search…. The bug was that only the most recently uploaded 100 mods were showing up with each search! That means mods older than the latest 100 were getting omitted in search results.

This issue wasn't detectable in the beginning because when U12 went live that was only the beginning of modders uploading mods, so most mods were under that 100 limit and thus showing in a search. Then slowly over time the oldest of mods were quietly getting buried (like multiplayer mod) but no one really noticed because the impact was minimal. However now that there are hundreds of mods on modio it is more obvious that some are being buried, so it is lucky we addressed this bug now before too much time passed as it would have been the case that going forward 100s of mods in the future would have been unsearchable in mod manager.

Anyway, this should be fixed now! The cool news about this is that the next time you go into mod manager after 12.3 you will likely see some new (technically old) mods showing up in your searches.

Related to mods, there were some nice optimizations made that should dramatically reduce loading times for mods. On average the game loading speed is now saving about 1 second per mod, so that means the loading time increase for mods is approx 40%, which will surely be enjoyed by all!

Also on the topic of optimization, there was some good work done to reduce build size on PCVR and Nomad. Nomad players will probably feel the benefits of this the most, where their hardware overhead is more precarious than PCVR; in particular 3 star dungeons should not crash anymore due to reducing Nomad’s memory usage and fixing some memory leaks.

Last but not least, a little bonus is we finally add that stinger volume slider, so now you can control the volume of the stinger (or disable it) independent from the music.

So that's just about it for now guys, have a look at the full changelog below. If there is a U12.4 it will be prob just some minor bugfixes, and other than that we are full steam ahead on 1.0 and Crystal Hunt.... the final major update!

On the topic of Crystal Hunt, the good news to share is that the majority of the team has been working on this even while a few devs were working on 12.3, so there was no lost dev time on the 1.0 update. However, the amount of work left in 1.0 is colossal. This will be the final Early Access update and it will be our biggest by far; just about everything in the game is being touched on, enhanced or has new content. It's going to be an insanity update for us.

So with that, I know a lot of you guys are chomping at the bit to know more about Crystal Hunt and see some previews, but mostly that is going to be kept until the "Road to 1.0" news, which are the big milestone news that give some early preview of an update. We don't like to give too much away too early because first of all it is too early to give any good previews (there are no screenshots or gifs to share yet, etc), but also we usually like to make sure we know what features are / are not going into an update so as not to disappoint; better to underpromise and overdeliver so people are pleasantly surprised. And then of course, we also like secrets and surprising the players with stuff. ːtmntdonː

So stay tuned for that, guys. If you enjoy reading every morsel of information available on the development, you could also check out this long and informal reddit post. Otherwise, enjoy 12.3! ːsteamdanceː Viveport players - the update will now finally come to Viveport very soon.

Cheers!

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[h2]Features:[/h2]

- Added support for the Mod Manager on Nomad on Pico
- Added a music stinger volume slider in the audio options

[h2]Enhancements / Changes:[/h2]

- Updated BHaptics plugin
- Added GameModeData catalog data
- Added GameModeModules which act like level modules, except for game modes
- Polish UI/UX (Improve visual feedback, and add haptics and audio feedback to all the UI buttons when interacting with the pointer)
- Reduced build size by 100MB for Nomad and 1GB for pcvr
- Added option to enable spell wheel names on the spell wheel
- Added report bug functionality to submit logs. An ID is shown to the user they can provide it for investigation
- Added tooltips to slider options
- Added a new mod manager window to inform the authentication code will be sent to the user email
- Reduced mod addressables loading time

[h2]Fixes:[/h2]

- Fixed low-mass objects floating when picked up with one hand and touched with another.
- Fixed Ocean SFX from stopping if many objects are destroyed at once in Home.
- Fixed ID for MusicArena it had trailing whitespace.
- Fixed slash and blunt decal heightmaps not being applied to creatures
- Fixed a memory leak causing a crash in Nomad 3 stars dungeon
- Fixed some disabled buttons just updating the visually disabled state once the pointer hovers them
- Fixed items' and categories' buttons on the item book not being highlighted the first time the pointer hovers them
- Improved item and wave book interaction performance
- Reduced mesh and audioclip memory usage
- Improved effect spawning logic to help with breakables performance
- Fixed modded levels not being loaded when using -level argument
- Fixed the spinning bug when holding an NPC by telekinesis
- Fixed Pico 4 movement not updating properly
- Fixed debug logging with Bhaptics plugin
- Fixed mod manager timeout error window overlapping other windows in some cases
- Fixed players still being able to make some new requests to the server after the request rate limit was exceeded
- Canceling a spell by pressing grip no longer lets you cast merge spells with your fists

[h2]Modding:[/h2]

- Added a list of mesh to hide from FPV in creature component (to hide the head of the avatar with non-manikin characters)
- Added activateHandle reference on handles, allowing to activate the handle only when the linked handle is grabbed
- Added useRelativePosition on playerTeleporter
- Added fast grab consumable for inventory, if an item handled has a linked consumableID, pressing grab on the torso will automatically grab the corresponding consumable
- Added PiercedSpawner which can be used to spawn items pierced into static colliders, or spawn items with other items pierced onto damagers
- Added CreatureTool and ItemTool for selecting creatures and items, as well as GameTool to replace functionality modders used from the DebugTool and GameManager scripts (which are no longer in the SDK). CreatureTool and ItemTool can be used to copy event linkers onto targeted items
- Added force options to the Zone component which can be used to apply forces to items, NPCs, and the player
- Added new velocity reference mode to Item Spawner to inherit the velocity of a parent physics body
- ModOption will now work in structs
- Added generic sliders to the mod options
- Exposed fields and methods in HingeDrive, WaveSpawner, SpellTelekinesis, Handle
- Fixed an issue with HolderEventLinker, ImbueEventLinker, HandPoseSwapper
- Cleaned up and ensured the Creature Resurrect function is working as expected so the creature regains the correct amount of health and has their brain start back up

[h2]Hotfix 0.12.3.371:[/h2]

- Fixed a bug where the mod options page would not show anything when loading the game normally
- Added more information to ingame bug report so it properly reports pico and oculus user ids
- Fixed a bug with the ingame bug report so it doesnt inadvertently send multiple requests
- Fixed a bug with the ingame debug console including timestamps which prevented log messages being collapseable
- Fixed a bug when there is no collider group or collision handler when force piercing
- Added overload method to Ragdoll.GetPart to improve mod compatability
- Updated ItemTool to include:
EquipEventTargetToPlayerRightHand
EquipEventTargetToPlayerLeftHand
EquipOneSelectedToPlayerRightHand
EquipOneSelectedToPlayerLeftHand
- Fixed issue with the mercenary shoulders armor being rotated incorrectly

[h] Hotfix 0.12.3.382:[/h2]

- Fixed a bug with -level command line option hanging the game unless mods were installed
- Fixed a visual bug with Mod Option sliders not showing the correct value on loading into the game
- Fixed issue with the mercenary shoulders armor being rotated incorrectly on nomad
- Fixed Arena survival wave music not playing

Hello mates, a small patch incoming with a slew of fixes for U12.

One of the most noticeable fixes will be felt by Index players who were having issues with the physical swimming; this should feel a ton better now and be on par with the Quest swimming controls.

Another huge fix is something that has been the scourge of B&S troubleshooting since early modding days. Many will know the pain of installing a bad mod that causes infinite loading, or even worse, removing that bad mod but still having your game hang or your performance reduce to a crawl because the missing mod is spamming the logs with errors.
Finally we have a potential solution implemented so that corrupt/invalid asset bundles for mods should no longer hang loading and save files with old mod data are now cleaned out so old data doesn't spam the log with errors. ːsteamdanceː

On the SDK side, the spawning books and alters are now fixed so custom arena maps should be good to go. The first iteration of custom Dungeons documentation is also now out, meaning modders can now read up on how to make custom dungeons. ːpraisesunː We will keep adding more documentation to the wiki as time goes on; some folks have been asking for custom music documentation for example.

And by the way, on the subject of modding, in less than 4 weeks since release the number of mod downloads for Blade & Sorcery on modio has passed 22 million downloads with 11 million subscribers..... for any game, let alone a VR game, that is completely and utterly bananas. B&S modders are smashing records over there - we are proud of you guys! ːsteamsunnyː

That's it for now, folks! Last little note because I know non-Steam players read these news too --

If you are a PICO user reading the news, please check this out!

Nomad players having issues with Meta downloads, please check this!

If you are a U12 modder, please check out the latest post about version tags on the modder-bulletin channel on discord.




- Fixed issue with index controllers and swimming
- [Nomad] Fixed home mirror black artifacts
- Fixed player eyes reflection being wrong when looking our avatar in the mirror
- Fixed bhaptics not loading plugin
- Fixed bug where an item breaks and the original doesn't despawn
- Added new QA menu to test levels
- Fixed bug where players inventory wasn't getting saved when going back to home
- Fixed not being possible to scroll down to read the last mod option tooltip.
- Fixed broken mod asset bundles causing the game to hang on loading screens
- Fixed removed modded items not being cleaned from the save file
- Fixed mod options' categories not being shown in the selected language
- Potentially fixed an issue where players could hit an invisible barrier in some runs where CliffTerrace was added.
- Removed dirt from home mirror and reduced distortion effect slightly
- Fixed weird lighting in some areas of SewerMaintenance
- Fixed seams in the walls in SewerMaintenance
- Fixed incorrect skybox in SewerMaintenance
- Fixed weird water behaviour in SewerMaintenance and UndergroundZipline
- Fixed clipping issues with the male mercenary gloves
- Fixed long text values overlapping the new mod options button frame
- Fixed long mod options tooltips overlapping over the options bellow
- Fixed bug where handposer tool wasn't mirroring the finger tips position
- Fixed ModOptionSaveValue attributes not being processes
- Fixed ModOption(string name) constructor not setting default values
- Fixed a bug where the defaultValueIndex was sometimes not used
- Fixed a bug with color and catalogitem modoptions weren't being refreshed by the UI if data was changed at runtime
- Using -vrmode oculus will now correctly force oculus loader to be used
- Added MockHMD support using -vrmode mockhmd (for rendering debug purpose)
- [Nomad] Fixed home wooden planks having black tips

Hello mates, the first patch for U12 is now released! Huge thank you to all the players for your really nice well wishes to the Warpfrog team following the release of U12. It's a real great morale boost for us all after working on the update for so many months, so much appreciation to you all for the support! ːer_heartː

This small patch contains a slew of bugfixes that were spotted in U12 - shoutout to those who reported bugs and the legends who recorded video / images of said bugs. That hugely helps with bugfixing!

Some of these fixes were little enviro issues like small pink textures and strange lighting, while some QoL fixes were added such as now being able to turn off the "stingers" kill sound when you lower the music slider (eventually we will add a toggle so you can disable stingers separate from music), and adding a little aid for players who get stuck on the wall jump portion of the tutorial - now it can be bypassed.

But best of all guys, the U12 SDK is now released. ːsteamdanceː This will allow modders to fully update every mod to U12.

To go with this, the guys at Warpfrog spent a bunch of time writing up a special wiki to give instructions on how to use everything in the SDK so that modders can get the best out of it. ːpraisesunː Modders will find all sorts of information here; from modding basics to setting up the SDK, information on item components and event linkers, to instructions for making your own custom armours and (eventually) custom dungeons - yes, native support for custom armour and dungeons is here! We are still writing the instructional docs on custom dungeons, so hang tight for that but it shouldn't be too long.

We are hoping this blows the roof off modding for U12! You can find the BAS WIKI here.

You will also find in this patch native support for bHaptics (pcvr only, no Nomad support for now). It used to be possible to use bHaptics with B&S via a mod, but now it is actually officially supported in the game.

Full changelog is below, cheers!



[h2]Features:[/h2]
- Added bhaptics support [PCVR]
- The player character's eyes move when looking in the mirror or viewing in third person
- U12 SDK released

[h2]Enhancements:[/h2]
- Changed how telekinesis targeting works so it makes more sense
- Added hardware info logging to logs
- Renamed Dismemberment cheat to "Easy Dismemberment"
- Made Easier Dismemberment cheat even easier
- [Mods] Added optional attributes that can be used to make creating mod options easier
- [Mods] Added support for buttons on ModOptions
- [Mods] Added support for mod option category ordering

[h2]Fixes:[/h2]
- Fixed spells being in the wrong order at the end of the tutorial
- Fixed mod manager button still being active after mods are loaded when returning to the main menu
- Fixed some tutorial images being incorrect
- Fixed pink square in Chapel
- Fixed shore mesh in Nomad home
- Fixed lightmap problems in Arena
- Fixed holes in doorways between rooms
- Adjusted handles on the small wooden crate
- Fixed tool weapons not sitting on players holsters correctly
- Fixed room going invisible when in climbing area of SewerGate
- Fixed touch highlighters displaying when out of range (grab bug)
- Fixed rock not falling properly in tutorial
- Fixed punching with free climb cheat on making your fists grip onto things
- Fixed telekinesis events not being configured correctly
- Sliced parts are no longer wirelessly connected to the creature's body
- Fixed an issue where deleting save games would still show the last character made
- Fixed stinger volume not being linked to music volume
- Fixed volume sliders not scaling properly
- [Mods] Reduced some item logging
- [Mods] Fixed an extended abstract ThunderScript from crashing the game
- [Mods] Added check to prevent ItemModules loading twice
- [Mods] Changes mod loading so it loads all mod assemblies, then all mod addressables, then all mod catalogs, then all mod options, then all mod thunderscripts, then the catalog refreshes.
- [Mods] Fixed character save loading so it happens after mods are loaded - modded spells and equipment now get added to the player properly
- [Mods] Fixed ContentCustomData from uninstalled mods hanging the game on load
- [Mods] Fixed mods without errors or modoptions showing on the mod options page