GAMEPLAY CHANGES

Progression-wise, the biggest problems we aimed to tackle in this release were that players quickly unlocked all Artifacts and that gold accumulated slowly (or fast, depending on the player's skill) with insufficient spending options later in the journey. The lack of extra artifacts meant that the journey could feel shallow or over soon, and for the gold, it quickly leads to a feeling that it is not worth it to collect or pick up. We wanted to reach a point where you are always needing more gold and where there isn’t a ton of it piling up in everyone’s storage.

Artifacts

• Five new artifacts were added through quests.
• Existing artifacts tuned in behavior and cost with UI improvements added.

Increased the value of gold from mid-game onwards

• Unlock more and better shop options through quests (eg. higher rarity items on offer and possibilities of buying Rune of Breaking and Searing Flasks).
• Quest rewards which unlock additional tabs of full storage spaces added.
• Updates to pricing for existing items.
• Increased gold cost of crafting Slayer gear, and reduced the availability of them from regular drops.

Crafting

• Adjusted most recipes that contain any of the “cursed” items or items acquired through special events in the missions, to require fewer of them, as they generally require more work than regular crafting materials.

Misc

• Added a 1% chance for Supreme tier items to drop from both the high-end Dragon chests.
• Explosive Barrels were added to introduce environmental combat variety.
• Bramble added to the environment that affects traversal.
• Destructible logs added to the environment.
• Rock gates hidden in the world to be discovered.
• Fruit and vegetables that explode underfoot added to farms.
• Added VFX/SFX to pick ups and chest opening moments.
• Main hub voice lines added for NPCs.
• Legacy point challenges disabled for this release while we work on a new system.
• Modified some challenges to facilitate disabling the Legacy Point challenges
• Updated several enemy and environment node drops.
• Various map updates and visual polish throughout.
• Herb nodes drop slightly more herbs now.
• Hearable distance of certain actions have been increased (eg. gates, ore nodes and big chests).
• The level cap was raised to 100. No change to when features unlock (eg. Perks).
• Increased the drops for several enemies as they were dropping too little total value. Forest Golem, Enraged Golem, Sharptooth, Imp Bolter.

UX/UI

• NEW Inventory management iteration
  • This is a necessary and important part of any game with loot, and to ensure players’ ability to find and organize their items according to their own preferences, we have iterated heavily on how we handle items in the UI. To that end:
    • You can now split item stacks!
      • This has afforded us the opportunity to make many more items stackable that were not before. Moonstone, we’re looking at you.
    • You can now sort your Storage!
      • Sort it according to type, rarity & value.
    • You can also filter your inventory visually!
      • This should help you find the items you want much more easily. It is visual only, so all actions are still possible on all items, meaning you can reorder and split any item still. This affords you the most versatility.
      • Filter in Rarity, Slot or Category filters, all additive.
      • Only accessible when in Storage, but it works for your backpack too.
    • Various UI/UX polish and improvements to support new Inventory changes.
      • For example:
        • If you hover an equipment slot, any item that fits in that slot will be highlighted.
        • Increased visibility of Equipment slot highlight.
• Reworked Gear Score UI:
  • We now display the Gear Score with a base of 80, because that is the “Gear Score value” of a given Vaultbreaker’s base kit (without any gear or other buffs added). We do this to more accurately display the actual power difference that gear provides (a gear score increase of 5 if your base is 0 is an enormous relative increase, but 5 on top of 80 is much more representative of the actual power added).
  • The Gear Score colors have been removed as well, to not artificially indicate tiers of power that were non-existent, and because they indicated a link to the rarity of gear worn that was not representative.
• Character Select view:
  • Lumiri got a glow up with new Splash Art!
• Added bespoke sprites for many more keyboard keys in rebinding
  • For example, there is now a visual difference between left and right ctrl, alt and shift.
• Activatable items show their cooldown in the equipment slot in loadout.
  • Still to come is the cooldown properly described in tooltips.
• Warning messages added when attempting to enter missions with loot and materials in your backpack.
• Quit button added to the region select screen.
• Allow WASD to be remapped in the keybindings menu.

Combat changes

• NEW Enemy added - Deadeye Bandit.
• NEW Several Activatable items added:
  • Mobility Insignia
  • Hourglass of Tempo
  • Fireball Wand
  • Blink Stone
  • Invisibility Orb
  • Shield Generator
  • Lightning Box
  • Arcane Energy Stone
  • Dark Charm
• Reworked Wolfswood tier 2-3 and Refinery enemies to be harder.
• Bosses heal up when out of combat.
• Changed some Mini bosses to be Named minions (shown with Healthbar).
• When taking damage, an on-screen effect will show to alert the player.
• Rebalanced consumables to differentiate further from activatables.
• Added cooldowns to consumables.
• Added Werewolf enrage visual effects.
• Max movement speed of 5.0 for all characters.
• Character balance changes:
  • Thora
    • Thora can no longer crit with her abilities.
    • Reworked Ice Armor perk to be Arctic Embrace. 20% slow for 3 sec. (instead of 30% for 6 sec) Has 30 sec. cooldown.
      • Note: This perk was never meant for PvP, but instead of making it PvE only, we’ve toned it down a bit and added a cooldown. We will see if this is enough otherwise there is the option of making it affect minions only.
    • Base move speed 3.55 to 3.35
      • Note: More in-line with others and she is the fastest as soon as she takes some damage.
    • Innate movement speed 0.5% to 0.2% per health missing.
      • Note: It’s still the same 20% max cap but you have to be lower health to reach max.
    • Basic attack range 2.5 to 2.3.
      • Note: Minor nerf, but mainly to match VFX.
    • Rage Spin reduce range 3 to 2.65.
      • Note: Minor nerf, but mainly to match VFX.
  • Sparkwing
    • Sparkflight cooldown 14 to 12.
    • Power Vortex impact speed increase 1.4 to 1.
  • Lumiri
    • Fix Piercing Overgrowth Shield duration to be 2s to match its tooltip.
    • Root Cage impact speed increase 1.4 to 1.
    • Floral Finesse distance 3.5 to 3.75.
  • Bjornir
    • Wild Swing charge distance reduced from 8.5 to 7.5.
• Lone Wolf buff balance changes:
  • Normal damage 10 to 20.
  • Special damage 10 to 20.
  • PvE damage 10% to 20%.
  • NEW PvP damage 0 to 20%.
  • Healing received 40% to 0%.
  • Gear score +10 to +20.
• Perk changes:
  • Unlock more perks from the start to give some choice.
  • Removed Minion Resistance Study.
    • Combined with Minion Armor Study.
  • Removed Boss Resistance study.
    • Combined Boss Armor Study.
  • Changed icon on Crest of Protection / Minion Armor study.
  • Bjornir has Boss Vulnerability study.
  • Changed icon for Strong Feather (Angry feather).
  • Perk Balance changes:
    • Bark Skin - Wind Buff also reduce damage taken by 20%.
    • Wound Up - Gain 3 Circuit Orb whenever you enter combat. 30 sec. cooldown.
    • Faintfoot - Your aggro range is reduced by 30% and you gain +3% movement speed.
    • Ice Armor (Bjornir) - Apply 2 Chill stack to enemy attackers if they have none.
    • Energizing Touch - Floral Finesse explosion generates 50 Energy per enemy hit.
• Lumiri animation polish and VFX polish added.
• Sparkwing animation polish.
• Character model now follows mouse cursor.
• Bigger vulnerable damage text.
• Added more enemy VFX and indicators.
• Allow for ESC to cancel ability cast.
• Iteration on Wolf circling behavior.
• Optimised VFX particle systems.

System changes

• Cloud progression has been added, allowing progression to be shared between multiple computers.
• Storage is now shared between characters.
• Name filtering improvements.
• Improved load times when entering matches.
• Optimized the performance for many visual effects.
• Reduced the performance overhead of changelings.
• Optimized rendering performance of the main hub.
• Optimized culling of environment assets.

Bug fixes:

• Holding basic attack would result in slower attack speed than clicking really fast (Holding is now as fast as clicking was in previous tests).
• Text "A teammate has left the match" would be shown if a player not on your team would leave the match.
• Items stored now properly contribute to your total gold value.
• Connection issues during stability tests have been addressed.
• Typos and grammar issues in quest text have been corrected.
• Placeholder text in quest descriptions has been replaced with final dialogue.
• The Ley-line energy cost for completing “Inventory Galore” has been reduced.
• Enemies and item drops required for some quests now appear as expected.
• Incorrect line breaks in some quest descriptions have been cleaned up.
• Quests no longer ask for incorrect or unavailable items.
• Matchmaking should no longer time out unexpectedly.
• Some quests that wouldn’t progress correctly now update as intended.
• Ley-energy and feature rewards no longer take up inventory space.
• “Something Went Wrong” errors should no longer appear when closing the server or creating lobbies.
• Items marked as "unsellable" can no longer be sold in the lobby.
• Awkward punctuation in quest titles has been smoothed out.
• Buffs now display their icons correctly.
• Items no longer disappear when switching characters and buying from the shop.
• Reduced frequency of game freezing when exiting the application.
• Reduced the amount of long freezes while loading that would display the "Application not responding" Windows dialog.