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.

New Changes

Mission & Map

• Performance, loading and memory usage improvements
• Improved water rendering
• New enemies added:
  • Ghost Bandit Crossbow
  • Ghost Bandit Dagger
  • Forgotten Champion
• Reworked the main questline up to the first Vaultbreak event.
• Many quest rewards reworked to support new Ability Items
• Darkness rework
  • New darkness effect and behavior added to the Elemental and Gondrak caves
  • Torches added to maps in Darkness areas, but darkness radius is now smaller
• New Spirit Artifact added to the second Vault
• Refinery map extended in size (new mini areas are coming soon!)
• Gas mask and poison rework
• Storm Summoner removed along with its building requirement
• Silverhook Sam and Goldbelly locations in the mission updated
• Bear Cave is no longer locked
• Multiple environment effect SFX & VFX updates
• Updated Doomburst Cactus name and locations available
• Chest type and location updates
• Bahra now patrols the area
• Ore now drops from various Elementals
• Changelings removed from Tutorial match
• Health bar communication of color and state updated
  • All health bars are now green, so they do not impart information about if a given entity is an enemy or a friend. You will have to find that out in other ways!
  • Wounds are dark green, so they do not appear similar to shields, and are thematically better linked to health.
  • Party members’ names now appear in blue in missions as well (this was only the case in the Haven before)
• Added primary quest line icons to differentiate primary quests and other quests in the world
  • Hopefully, this helps players make easier decisions about what to pursue when in doubt

Combat Balance

• Vaultbreaker abilities available from the start have been reworked
• Gear slots reworked
• Ability items added for deeper playstyle expression and customization:
  • 3x class ability items
  • 7x gear abilities
  • 2x weapon abilities
• Balance changes for playable Vaultbreakers:
  • Dev comment: With so many new Ability Items added, the balance is hard to predict. We’ve tried tweaking some things based on the last test, but not overreacting too much before we see how Ability Items affect the game. For the changes, the big outliers last test were Nymera being too strong and Lumiri being too weak. Lumiri’s energy re-cast rework was a bit too demanding. Nymera's ultimate was a bit too strong for PvP when staggered.
    • Nymera Ult - Emerald Barrage damage delay time from 0.1 to 0.3
    • Nymera Ult - Emerald Barrage projectiles 5 to 4
    • Nymera Ult - Can no longer be rotated while channeling
    • Nymera Perk - Soaring Strike less invulnerability duration on cast from 1 to 0.5s
    • Nymera - NEW evasive ability - Moth Dash (Can get Soaring Strike through perk)
    • Lumiri perk - Sharp Leaves - Damage increased from 80 to 120 and scaling from 70% to 100%
    • Lumiri - Piercing Overgrowth. No recast. Base version doubles Shooty Flowers.
    • Lumiri - Basic attack and flower attack energy gain increased from 2 to 4.
    • Lumiri Perk - Empowered Discount energy reduction reduced from 50 to 25.
    • Lumiri Perk - Energizing Touch to 50 to 25 energy per hit.
    • Thora - Rager whirl pulls in (reverse knockback) enemies
    • Thora - NEW evasive ability - Rager Dash (Can get Whirlwind through perk)
    • Bjornir - Wild Swing energy gain reduced from 20 to 10
    • Bjornir - Basic attack has energy gain on hit from 0 to 5
    • Bjornir - Basic attack hold self slow increased from 20% to 25%
    • Sparkwing Perk - Empowered Vortex base damage increase from 50 to 150
• Balance changes for enemies:
  • Dev comment: We are tweaking enemies in Wolfswood to have less health and be fewer in numbers overall, but will deal a bit more damage, so the difficulty is still similar. Some enemies will have very little health and won’t drop any loot. They should be quick and satisfying to clear. Others will be threats with higher damage, but will also drop loot. And then we have the real threatening enemies that you have to watch out for. With higher health, higher damage but also better loot. You can tell them apart by their healthbars.
  • The following enemies have been updated with various changes to their projectiles, ranges, health, cast times, movement speed, power level, threat, loot, patrol behavior and damage:
    • Sniper Scrat
    • Guardpaw Sentry
    • Elite Poison Spiderling
    • Spiderling
    • Vine Zombie
    • Forest Golem
    • Netter Scrat
    • Pebble
    • Scrap Scrat
    • Wolf
    • Alpha Wolf
    • Desert Spiderling
    • Crawling Mine
    • Werewolf
    • Deadeye
    • Bandit Werewolf
    • Stonebear
    • Bandit Crossbow
    • Bandit Dagger
    • Rubble
    • Aleric
    • Axe Scrat
    • Sharptooth
    • Bandit Dagger
    • Barrel Scrat
    • Poison Spiderling

Inventory

• Gold stack sizes increased:
  • Gold stacks increased to 2500
  • Gold pouch stacks increased to 5000
  • Dev comment: Storage space and storage pressure are something we are constantly considering. We are planning a bigger revamp of storage in one of the coming updates (making it less restrictive), but we want to already ease the pressure mid-to-late game now.
• Storage upgrades now only cost gold
  • Dev comment: In line with the Gold Stack change, we want to make it easier to upgrade storage space early, and the very specific materials needed were slowing that down. This change is part of the bigger revamp that is coming for storage, but it was something we could easily do now.
• Junk item types updated
• Updates made to hover states on multiple item types, and info communicated
  • Most importantly, you can now see the item that a crafting recipe creates (yes, we know, groundbreaking stuff!)

Haven

• Haven building reward structures updated
  • Forced choices removed on upgrade paths
  • Dev comment: We love when players have to make choices, especially when they are something that might lead to different choices in future seasons. But the upgrades we tried out for the buildings didn’t feel impactful enough, or they felt too one-sided and subsequently the choice just felt annoying.
• Some recipes can now be learned directly through the inventory by reading recipe books
• Crafting items and unlocking paths updated
• Challenges now unlock at 50 Leyline energy
• Vaultbreaker abilities added to Vaultbreakers Select screen
  • A long time coming, we know.
• Loading tips updated to reflect the current design and lore
• Bjornir replaced Thora as the wishlist unlockable character
  • New players were incentivized to try out this new Vaultbreaker they just unlocked, and Thora was not a good fit for that.
• Key binding options updated
  • Among other things, we have removed the game using the universal back command to exit menus, because players were experiencing issues using the side buttons on their mouse for Discord or similar use while playing. This means that you will have to use the Esc button instead of the side button “back” to exit menus, if you used that before.
• All Perks for a given Vaultbreaker are now visible -with tooltip information- in the Perks screen, with additional information about when and how to unlock them if relevant

Codex Feature

• Complete challenges to gain Legacy and Marks that you can use to claim rewards in the Codex
• All rewards are kept between tests, and after launch (this means everything you unlock now is yours forever)
  • All Legacy and Marks you have when a test ends are also kept between tests and after launch
• The rewards you can unlock in the Codex are:
  • Abilities
  • Perks
  • Chromas/Skins
  • Emotes
  • Marks
• The Codex is intended to be the game’s meta progression layer, and hopefully will give you lots of interesting choices and things you would like to claim. Nothing offered in the Codex is intended to be inherently more powerful than what you otherwise obtain. It is gameplay variation and options for building the exact Vaultbreaker you want to play. Read more in this Discord post
• 3D character models and skins/Chromas added to Vaultbreaker select screen

Bug fixes:

Matchmaking, Networking & Sessions

• Fixed multiple matchmaking failures, timeouts, and session-join errors.
• Improved party and friend-queue reliability when joining or cancelling matchmaking.
• Fixed cases where players could get stuck while transitioning into or out of matches.
• Resolved issues causing players to join incorrect or stale sessions.

AI & Enemy Behavior

• Fixed enemies ignoring obstacles or detecting players through walls.
• Improved enemy pathing to prevent getting stuck, clipping, or passing through geometry.
• Fixed AI state issues that could cause enemies to freeze, jitter, or behave incorrectly.
• Resolved issues with enemies spawning in invalid locations.
• Enemy player and Changeling names are differentiated.

Gameplay & Mechanics

• Fixed abilities, items, or interactions triggering when they should be locked or unavailable.
• Resolved issues where interactions could fail, double-trigger, or not respond.
• Fixed incorrect stat application, buffs, or effects not behaving as intended.
• Addressed cases where player input could cause unintended movement or rotation.

Quests, Challenges & Progression

• Fixed quests that could not be completed or were completed incorrectly.
• Fixed challenges not tracking progress correctly.
• Prevented quests from being completed in unintended locations (such as the lobby).
• Fixed quest states resetting, duplicating, or becoming blocked.
• Resolved issues where quest items could be lost or not registered.

Visuals, Animation & Presentation

• Fixed missing, incorrect, or placeholder models, materials, and effects.
• Resolved T-posing, animation freezes, and incorrect animation states.
• Fixed clipping issues with characters, enemies, and environment objects.
• Improved death animations and presentation timing.
• Fixed UI elements overlapping, misaligning, or displaying incorrectly.

UI, UX & Text

• Replaced placeholder text across tutorials, tooltips, items, and upgrades.
• Fixed incorrect labels, descriptions, and grammar issues.
• Improved tooltip visibility and accuracy across menus and inventories.
• Fixed UI buttons missing, not responding, or displaying the wrong action.
• Improved feedback when interacting with menus and systems.
• Fixed not being able to pick up items into stacks when you had a full inventory (yikes, sorry for that one, happy we got to fix it now)
• Fixed being able to sell an item and using the freed slot for the gold from the sale, so you can sell things with a full inventory (also yikes)

Crafting, Items & Upgrades

• Fixed crafting recipes with incorrect rarity, rewards, or requirements.
• Resolved missing or incorrect recipe data from building upgrades.
• Fixed item rewards being delivered incorrectly or as physical items when unintended.
• Fixed missing icons and incorrect tooltips for items and upgrades.
• Corrected upgrade bonuses that were applying the wrong effects.

Audio

• Fixed multiple sound effects triggering simultaneously.
• Resolved missing or incorrect interaction sounds.
• Fixed audio playing at incorrect times or persisting after actions.

Performance & Stability

• Fixed major performance spikes and freezes during gameplay.
• Improved stability during high-load situations such as enemy spawns.
• Fixed crashes, ANRs, and backend errors affecting gameplay sessions.
• Improved overall runtime stability and error handling.

Known Issues:

• When a player leaves a trio or duo party, player queues are not automatically adjusted.
• 3rd Party tools such as VPNs, geo and latency blockers can cause players to be locked out at 1000 ping.
• Quest progress doesn't track items equipped in the consumable slot, only from inventory and storage.
• There have been some instances of players returning to a previous match they have been in on requeuing.
• Thora cooldown and animations can fall out of sync
• Gamepad can rotate camera regardless of Camera Movement Mode setting
• Vision does not return after using a movement ability during looting. Repeating it will restore vision
• In rare instances, a Changeling can spawn into a match with you on your team.