This update kicks off our newest playtest. We’ve added a handful of new features, balance changes, QoL improvements, bug fixes, and this week, you will be able to experience all of this. As always, we would love to hear your thoughts and feedback, as it helps us improve the game for you.

For those of you who missed our previous announcements, this Playtest is special as it is a technical test for an upcoming Demo we’re working on. This means you’ll encounter limited content. If you want to learn more about our upcoming plans, you can watch our latest Dwarf Talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ8sHD-UDTU

New Additions

• Item changes

  • Invisibility Orb no longer give movement speed
  • Vacuum Stone cooldown reduced from 16 to 10s
  • Vacuum Stone also gives a Shield with 200 health +10% of your max health
  • Fireball Wand cooldown reduced from 14 to 12
  • Fireball Wand cast time reduced from 0.5 to 0.35s
  • Mobility Insignia cooldown reduced from 50 to 40s
  • Shield Generator shield duration from 2 to 2.5s
  • Dark Tome changed to recoverable health damage and crit chance is reduced from 100% to 70%
  • Invisibility Orb cooldown increased from 26 to 40 sec.
  • Garden Row cast time reduced 0.5 to 0.4s
  • Garden Row knockback added
  • Garden Row shield added (health scaling)
  • Throw Axe recover wounds equal to 10% of Thora's missing health.
  • Throw Axe damage re-scaled and now scales with Max Health.
  • Throw Axe cast time from 0.5 to 0.45s
  • Archdruid Staff Piercing Overgrowth shield is health scaling
  • Archdruid Staff Piercing Overgrowth AD scaling from 60 to 80%
  • Spark Ball Crystal changed to be physical damage scaling

  Vaultbreaker Changes

  Nymera

  • Emerald Barrage scaling to have a bit more magical damage scaling
  • Innate Spiritbloom energy on pickup changed from 15 to 20
  • Moth Dash attack speed buff base duration changed from 1 to 2
  • Marks removed:
    • Innate basic attack gives 5 energy on hit
    • Split Shot does not require mark to stun
  • Perk Polymoth also has: Your basic attack hits have 2% chance to turn a minion into a moth.
  • Perk Explosive Barrage size from 1 to 1.6
  • Perk Explosive Barrage delay from 0.5 to 0.7
  • Perk Circle Of Life also has: Spiritbloom gives an additional 5 Energy on pickup
  • NEW Perk - Aimed Attack: Change the Basic Attack to be stretchable, allowing it to shoot farther and deal up to +150% damage
  • NEW Perk - Sneak Attack: Gain 20 Ability Haste and 10% movespeed for 5 sec. when basic attacking from Stealth and Bushes. Doesn't stack.

  Bjornir

  • Base AD decreased from 86 to 70. Rescaled Basic attack to deal similar damage as before.
  • Removed stun bonus from innate
  • Perk Chilled also gives -10% reduced movement speed and -30% Casting Speed
  • Perk Sturdy changed to also give 20% magic resistance.
  • Perk Fury changed from being % health and not scaling with max health to instead: 2% attack speed for every 200 health missing.
  • Perk Ice Armor, Chill stack decreased from 2 to 1. Also has At 1600 Max Health: Apply +1 stack and block the damage if it is a Minion.
  • NEW Perk - Empowered Taunt: Taunting gives 100 max health for 3 sec. stacking up to 5 times.
• Adventure and Core difficulty options are now available, each with their own rules, bonuses and rewards. Breaker difficulty is shown but unavailable in this release.
• Updated warnings before entering with broken equipment.
• Unwanted equipment can now be salvaged into useful materials.
• Health bar changes:
  • Enemies have red health bars (this means both changelings and PvE enemies).
  • Local player and their party members (as well as their summons) have green healthbars and blue names.
  • Players not in your party have green health bars but off-white names, BUT
  • If players not in your party engage in pvp (ie. deal damage another player), their (and their summons') health bar changes to red, and stays red for 45 sec. after their last pvp damage hit.
  • If a players' summon damages another player, the summon and player gets a red health bar. Both the summon and the players pvp damage dealt resets the 45 sec. timer for both.
• More than 50 new items have been introduced, including crafting materials, recipes, fixed-stat gear and named equipment.
• Recipes for named and fixed items can now be found as drops from enemies and chests.
• New item markers indicate when something is needed for a quest, recipe, building or upgrade.
• Item tooltips now identify the factions and locations where relevant items can be found.
• Storage can now be expanded through unlockable rows, additional chests and up to five tabs.
• New NPC and building upgrades provide additional backpack space and bonuses to healing, wound recovery, experience, gold and interaction speed.
• Wolfswood features new and expanded areas, including the Scrat Invasion, Pinecrest Farm, a Bandit Enclave and the South Vault Crash.
• Houses throughout Pinecrest Farm and Pinecrest Village can now be entered and explored.
• New environmental challenges include electrical floors and darkness-based encounters, with more to come.
• Unlockable one-way portals introduce additional traversal mechanics.
• Old Bear Enemy added.
• Extraction portals now feature updated visuals, audio and clearer interaction text.
• The redesigned Social view includes friend requests, invitations, player presence and an improved friends list.
• Haven now features a larger map with additional points of interest and clearer building and upgrade markers.
• Gift codes can now be entered through a dedicated redemption screen.
• An in-game bug-report button is available in the Settings menu.
• Controller support has been added to the opening flow and expanded throughout the game’s menus.
• French, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Korean are now supported.
• New voice lines and combat sounds have been introduced for NPCs, bosses and named enemies, alongside expanded ambience and distant danger audio.
• Wolf summon now provides XP and kill credit to the player who summoned the wolf

Feature Changes

• Nymera is now the starting Vaultbreaker instead of Sparkwing.
• Healing has been reworked to make damage more threatening during combat while providing stronger ways to recover between encounters.
• The starting amount of damage converted into wounds has been reduced, and wounds no longer recover passively.
• Food, bandages and healing potions now have more distinct roles, timings and availability.
• Healing values shown in tooltips now account for applicable bonuses.
• A red screen effect now warns you when your health is low.
• Camera Panning removed from camera options.
  • Dev comment: We have removed the panning camera in Vaultbreakers for a couple of reasons:
  1. We had a need to reduce the complexity of the camera solutions because the way the camera works directly influences how we can build the game, both from an environment/level design perspective, but also from a gameplay perspective. Having panning in addition to rotating meant that we had to design -and test- many more permutations of possible scenarios than with just one version of the camera.
  2. The team feels strongly that the rotating camera is the better experience, and that panning didn’t quite live up to our standards for a release-worthy solution, even if it also had its champions internally. Rotating and pitching the camera is now thought of as a key feature of the game, and so is not possible to turn off either. The design of the game relies to a certain extent on players utilizing this. An onboarding tutorial to ensure new players learn about the camera will be forthcoming as we move towards release. We are also planning to put the camera in the minimap as a directional icon in addition to the player arrow, so it is clearer to players what way they are oriented as compared to the map.
• Chat removed entirely to prevent crashes and other issues as it is not supported.
• Ability items and fixed gear have been reworked to offer more build options and clearer character synergies.
• Critical-damage information has been added to character stats and supported equipment.
• Fireball Wand, Energy Flare, Lightning Box, mobility items and several perks have received clearer effects and presentation.
• We have updated Haste Orbs from 5 seconds to 15 seconds.
• Shop refresh timers changed from 16 min to 16 hours.
• Loot tables have been reworked across enemies, containers, resource nodes and shops to make drops more varied and useful.
• Golden chests now require keys, primarily earned from minibosses and other rare sources.
• Common and uncommon equipment is easier to craft, while early quest rewards provide less gear.
• Crafting requirements, building costs and several upgrade requirements have been reduced.
• Crafting lists have been reordered and recipes now use clearer icons.
• The old Profession system has been removed.
• Elite and Nightmare enemies no longer appear in solo matchmaking, and bonus loot has been adjusted for group play.
• Adventure and Core missions now last 17.5 minutes.
• Adventure difficulty provides stronger survival bonuses, while Core offers greater risk and reward.
• Early quests and unlocks have been reordered to introduce crafting, shops, storage, NPC upgrades and the Codex more naturally.
• Building and NPC upgrade rewards have been revised, with clearer icons and more useful bonuses.
• Sam has moved and now introduces the expanded storage system through the early quest flow.
• Named enemies are now presented as bosses, with portraits and clearer health bars.
• Enemy placement and patrol routes across Wolfswood have been revised, with fewer enemies crowding roads and Pinecrest Farm.
• Enemies are harder to simply outrun once combat begins, while dangerous roaming enemies can now be heard before they are seen.
• Changelings now use distinct appearances, work together more consistently, flee for less time and are guaranteed to carry an ability weapon.
• Chests, salvaging, repairs, cooking, crafting and doors now have more varied audio feedback.
• The number of randomly appearing extraction portals has been adjusted to three for groups and two for solo players.
• The camera now consistently uses rotation mode instead of offering separate camera modes.
• Gear Score now begins at zero and animates when it changes.
• The minimap, quest markers and item interactions have received a broad readability pass.

Bug Fixes

• Resolved several crashes and forced exits when entering Wolfswood, joining matches, returning to Haven or opening the lobby.
• Improved connection reliability during matchmaking, joining and reconnecting to matches.
• Progression now saves correctly when leaving a match, changing scenes or closing the game.
• Quest objectives now complete and track more reliably.
• Quest rewards and important items are no longer lost, duplicated or blocked by a full inventory.
• Corrected several abilities, perks and attacks that failed to activate, dealt incorrect damage or prevented movement.
• Improved enemy patrols, aggression, targeting and retreat behaviour.
• Enemies and encounters now provide their intended loot more consistently.
• Healing items now restore the correct amounts, while consumables no longer break unexpectedly.
• Fixed a bug that caused ability haste to not affect ability items.
• Items no longer become invisible, overlap or enter occupied inventory and storage slots.
• Controller navigation has been improved across inventory, storage, buildings, Challenges, parties and the Codex.
• Extraction portals and teleporters now activate correctly and transport all eligible players.
• Map locations display more reliably, player positions are more accurate and discovered areas no longer remain hidden by fog of war.
• Reduced several sources of poor performance, excessive memory use and environment-rendering problems.

Known Issues:

• With all the new content updates, we have noticed a performance degradation for the min spec. We hope to optimise this in future.
• Gamepad camera pitch button triggers consumable use.
• Ability tooltips in character select do not appear when joining a new lobby
• Character Portrait in Mission Select View does not show until switching character
• Character selection is not reset between releases. This can result in a character being selected by default that is not available. This reverts on switch.
• We have worked to address some instances of disconnections and affiliated progress loss from the most recent match played. We have not observed any since our changes, but please do reach out with logs and scenarios if you run into any.