New Features:

• Improved Controller Support: The node navigation for the skilltree and the pathfinder on controller input got a entirely new algorithm to more precisely jump to nodes that are targeted by you thumbstick and d-pad input. The node navigation now works on all screen sizes and window settings and picks targeted notes much more precise. A bug was also fixed that caused tooltips to be hidden to early when navigating the skilltree with controller input.
• New World Event unlocking System: More complex world events are now gradually unlocked to make it easier for new players to understand how these world events work and what they are there for. Each unlocked world event will also display a new short tutorial, introducing the new world event types to new players. For all experienced players fear not after 12 completed maps you will have every world event unlocked.
• Hide Skilltree Tutorials: Added possibility to hide skilltree tutorials. They can be made visible anytime again.

Major Changes and Improvements:

• Added new Tree of Light minimap icon

Bugfixes:

• Fixed crash in skilltree and pathfinder when controller uses connection.
• Fixed hidden tooltips after input type change for the skilltree and pathfinder
• Fixed not being able to focus the reset player position on controller input at the pause menu. You can now also press button up to directly jump to the abandon run button in the pause menu.
• Fixed shortcut on buttons at choose game mode menu
• Fixed courtyard map not being able available before pathfinder is unlocked
• Fixed controller focus behaviour in save file manager

New Features:

• Default Software Cursor: A new software cursor has been implemented that guarantees for all OS and game setting combinations that the mouse cursor is visible. This options is active by default. You can enable/ disable the new software cursor in the options menu.

Bugfixes:

• Fixed a crash when using a teleport while being in bear form
• Fixed a bug with recent pathfinder changes that made you re-enter the same map again on controller input when pressing the A button
• The pathfinder option from the controller menu is now removed until you have unlocked the pathfinder
• Fixed clipping text on new pathfinder tutorial for some localisations
• Fixed typo at end of demo screen
• Fixed infinite progression loop when you had a new run that already opened up the pathfinder once

With update 0.9.8 we are reworking the character, skills and weapon unlocks to make it much easier to unlock the fun stuff and provide more determined progression. The pathfinder also got a major rework, with not only a new tutorial guiding new players but also allowing a direct teleport to a new map. With this update we are questioning old and dated systems to make them fresh and engaging. Just because it is like it is does not mean it has to stay as it is.

Major Improvements and Changes:

• Pathfinder Rework: The Pathfinder is a powerful device that lets you teleport to new maps. Critical components have been captured by the Aeodra and their servants. Utilising the full potential of the pathfinder will require to find the missing components first.
  The pathfinder system is now locked on new save files and will unlock after defeating the serpent on the void map for the first time. If you already have an active run past this progress the pathfinder will be unlocked automtically for you. Player feedback has shown that the Pathfinder system is an unnecessary layer of complexity. It is best introduced at a later stage when players have acquired map shards to make use of the system. Furthermore a new tutorial has been added to explain map mods and the map corruption system. Pathfinder teleporting got reworked. The time where you had to select a map in the pathfinder to go back to the portal, reactivate the portal and then enter the portal is over. You can now teleport directly from the pathfinder screen with the power of just one button click. Furthermore the pathfinder got a complete visual redesign as the old design was ancient.
• Easier Character Unlocks: Character unlocks are now much easier obtainable. Reaching level 10 on your first run will already unlock the Dark Wanderer. Reaching level 15 with Dark wanderer will unlock the Rogue character. Reaching level 15 with Rogue will unlock the Farmer character. Character unlocks from the town Ankerath are now possible directly without the need to unlock all weapons and skills. The unlock cost is also reduced to 10.
• Reworked Unlocks: Unlocks in general now have a dynamic price with the first unlocks being as cheap as 1 light fragment and then ramping up the more you have already unlocked. The dialogs now display the dynamic pricing showcasing exactly what you need for the unlocks. We want to give players access to the fun stuff as early as possible so that you can spend more time playing the game with everything it has to offer.
  
• Map Unlocks: The spawn chance of the map unlock device is now increased to unlock new maps much earlier.
• Descent Expedition: The cost to increase expedition depth has been greatly reduced. Cost per levels are now (2,4,6,8,10,12) was (10,20,30,40,50,60). The choice of which expedition depth you are choosing should be determined by what you build and playstyle can handle rather if you farmed enough sky gems.
• Improved Controller Navigation in Trees: You can now press two directions on the d-pad for more precise node jump navigation in the pathfinder and skilltree.
• Character Specialisation Rebalancing:
  • Range Unknown Wanderer Specialisation rebalancing: Powerful cast now can not be obtained directly at level 10 to allign it with melee unknown wanderer.
  • Powerful cast now increases projectile damage +150% (was 200%)
  • Dual Force now increases melee damage +150% and projectile damage +100% (was 150%)
  • Uber Slash now grants +10% crit chance and +100% crit damage (was +300% before)
  • Critical cast now grants 15% crit chance (was 20%) and +50% crit damage (was +200% before)
• Crafting Potential: Character starting weapons now start with 10 crafting potential (was 0 before).

Further improvements:

• Added glow effect to unused skill points in the skilltree
• Improved the available specialisations points UI design to allign it with the skilltree design. A glow effect now indicates you have specialisation points to spend.
• Improved position of legacy tree of light level
• The enter map button is now focused on default when clicking on a map using controller input

Bugfixes:

• Fixed sky forge weapons stats UI not updating when selected weapons
• Fixed a crash when dying and having ranged companions active
• Fixed serpent boss layering
• Added back the vanished map decorations in the basement map
• Fixed destroyable cave chests not being destroyable

Bugfix:

• Fixed a crash when defeating a minor boss after defeating an awakened gatekeeper

Improvements:

• Improved character weapon layering in choose gamemode screen
• Improved shadow effect on player characters
• Improved weapon positioning for player characters

Bugfixes:

• Fixed wrong damage number calculation for glaring light skill
• Fixed popping in world fog effects when moving left or right
• Fixed corrupted merchant getting stuck in non attacking loop
• Fixed switching to skilltree on world event start preventing bosses or enemies to spawn
• Fixed a crash on choose game mode screen when wildfire wrath weapon was equipped

A small update with big performance impact.

Improvements:

• General Performance improvements: The enemy idle states have been completely reworked to not have any performance impact. Now the amount of spawned enemies on the map should not impact performance as it did previously and which could be noticeable on high endgame maps.

Balancing:

• Glaring light now increases your melee and range attack cost by 2 energy and 2 endurance to allign it with the cost to upkeep the ability. After the recent base energy and endurance max and regeneration increase glaring light was very easy to upkeep with the power and AoE it provided.

Bugfixes:

• Fixed sanguine strike hidden effect on very fast attack triggers
• Fixerd a crash with sunfire sceptre
• Added translations for secret sheep
• Fixed awakened gatekeeper achievements with corrupted weapons triggering on normal bosses
• Fixed leaderboard not being able to switch between hardcore, softcore game modes and to view other game difficulty tiers. (v.0.9.7.4b)

With update 0.9.7.3a-d we are introducing a highly requested feature: Displaying the possible weapon base damage rolls on the weapons. Fast pathfinder loading and improved enemy AI. Furthermore this update is packed with performance improvements, visual enhancements for the pathfinder, balancing reworks and bugfixes.

New Features:

• Display Weapon Damage Range Tooltips: On each weapon tooltips you will now find a new hint that you can press right mouse button or right thumb stick on the controller to view the base weapon damage range the weapon can roll
• Improved Enemy AI: enemies now have much smoother velocity transitions between idle, move and attack states
• New pathfinder loading system: Pathfinder now loads much faster after it has been initialised for the first time this fixes potential issues with memory leaks and long loading times in endgame

Improvements:

• Performance improvements for enemy path finding
• Performance improvements for all weapon drops
• Improved enemy AI and movement transitions between enemy attack states
• Echo weapons now only appear on the merchant trade and aeodra arena reward if there are available echos that can actually be dropped (previously the weapon just got directly removed if you selected an echo but there was none created)
• Improved elder branch range weapon visual effect
• Reduced size of high damage numbers.
• Random world events now all have the same chance to spawn. So you should see the different rift world events all spawn with the same possibility. Previously there was some code related favourism on spawn rate, depending in what order world events have been assigned.
• Performance improvements for all enemies and their idle state
• More natural enemy spawn positioning on maps
• Reduced enemy player detection time for enemies
• New pathfinder map connection design to bring it up to pair with the recent skilltree connection line redesign
• Further refined skilltree connection design
• Specialisation tooltips that contain condition damage now display the first 3 condition damage ticks like for the skillnodes

Balancing

• Flood damage now only scales with projectile damage (did scale with projectile and melee damage)
• Fragmentation damage now only scales with melee damage (did scale with projectile and melee damage)
• Bursting Shot and Bursting Hit now only scales with melee damage (did scale with projectile and melee damage)
• Increased condition damage decay condition damage ticks now get 50% reduced damage (was 40% before)
• Changed the specialisation tree for the goladir and melee unknown wanderer to make endurance shield as accessible as energy shield
  
  

Bugfixes:

• Fixed a potential crash in descent expedition world event
• Fixed layering of world objects, previously it could happen that the rift world events hide some traps. Or the background could cover up some player effects.
• Fixed missing translation for caustic wounds in rogue specialisation
• Fixed empowered ailments specialisation not buffing condition damage. It now increases your condition damage by +20
• Fixed rolling stone boss triggering end of aeodra arena event to early
• Fixed achievement for ancient tree and elder club not unlocking on awakened boss version
• Fiexd enemies getting stuck in pathfinding loop when there have been items located around your player position
• Fixed heleja blink ability animation getting stuck
• Fixed a crash on character selection screen if gloomtide weapon was equipped and if there are active melee on attack triggers
• Fixed construct range attack initialising wrong attack speed after loading a map
• Fixed a crash on closing crafting window with x button from in game. (v.0.9.7.3b)
• Fixed new introduced weapon damage range calculation. (v.0.9.7.3b)
• Fixed crashes due to the new introduced weapon range display. (v.0.9.7.3b)
• Fixed attack cooldown UI stopped working after closing crafting window from in game. (v.0.9.7.3b)

Bugfixes

• Fixed Powerful Cast specialisation also increasing melee damage
• Fixed a bug that could case bosses with shield to get stuck in permanent shield mode
• Fixed one achievement not unlocking if achieved at the awakened gatekeeper version of the emerald widow
• Fixed button scaling on tree of light UI for localisations
• Fixed soft crash on leaderboard window (v.0.9.7.2b)

Balancing

• Energy Shield Specialisation: Now reduces 1 damage for each 12 energy (was 8). Recharge has been increased to 120 enemies (was 60).
• Endurance Shield Specialisation: Now reduces 1 damage for each 12 endurance (was 8). Recharge has been increased to 120 enemies (was 60).
• Bone Shield Specialisation: Recharge has been increased to 100 enemies (was 40).
• Protective Shell Specialisation: Now reduces 1 damage for each 8 health (was 6).Recharge has been increased to 100 enemies (was 50).

Balancing:

• Energy Shield: Now reduces 1 damage for each 8 max energy (was 4 before)
• Endurance Shield: Now reduces 1 damage for each 8 max endurance (was 4 before)
• Protective Shell: Now reduces 1 damage for each 6 max health (was 4 before)

Bugfixes:

• Fixed respec not working on certain skill nodes
• Fixed wrong specialisation description on skill tree origin node
• Fixed missleading translation for thunderforge weapon
• Fixed wrong assigned translation tags for respecing specialisations if no shard of refund are available (v.0.9.7.1c)
• Fixed multiple stacked companion skills not spawning multiple companions (v.0.9.7.1c)
• Fixed a crash on older save files due to not correctly set player character (v.0.9.7.1d)

New Features:

• All characters are now random displayed in the main menu.
• You will now gain exp for completing the full 3 section of the descent defense world event

Balancing

• Reverted the descent defense ability reset after 3 tower defense instances

Bugfixes

• Fixed damage tooltip calculation for rain of arrows for rogue specialisation
• Fixed a crash when using burning feather trinket to shapeshift into phoenix form
• Fixed some damage buff calculation errors for corrupted heart trinket ability
• Fixed corrupted heart label not directly updating when activating ability
• Fixed achievement for all melee weapons unlocked not working
• Fixed achievement for all range weapons unlocked not working
• Fixed achievement for all skills unlocked not working
• Removed achievement for unlocking increased collect range skill and chicken companion skill as those can only be found and not unlocked

Bugfixes:

• Fixed a crash when defeating secret boss enemies
• Fixed missing boundless reach specialisation description
• Fixed a crash when rescuing darokin
• Fixed a few crashes when using emerald staff or accessing stats when carrying emerals staff weapon
• Removed left over glaring light description in darokin character tooltip.
• Fixed glaring light skill not remaining active on maps even if you had enough resources
• Fixed crafting potential got re-rolled on dropped weapons when restarting the game (0.9.7.0e)
• Fixed wrong energy shield translation (0.9.7.0e)
• Fixed serpent bosses get stuck on fire breath animation when being frozen (0.9.7.0f)
• Fixed one rogue specialisation skill nodes not being connected to origin (0.9.7.0f)
• Fixed bad performance on beach map (v0.9.7.0g)
• Fixed crash when attacking with lightning staff (v.0.9.7.0g)
• Fixed multiple shield gains when defeating an enemy. This affected all new shield specialisation abilities. Resulting in nearly instant shield recovery after it has been activated. (v.0.9.7.0g)
• Fixed wrong translation tag for corrupted heart (v.0.9.7.h)

The Character Specialisation Content Udpate has arrived, and sticking close to our tradition this update turned out to be much bigger than originally planed.

New Features

Character Redesign

Character Specialisations

Heleja

• Great Knowledge: Your Energy and Energy Regeneration is drastically increased. Max Energy +3, Energy Regeneration +200%
• Major Scattering Projectiles: All projectiles from your range attacks scatter into 4 new projectiles on enemy hit.
• Critical Cast: Critical Hit Damage +200%, Critical Hit Chance +20%
• Explosive Projectiles: All projectiles explode on enemy hits
• Reflective Projectiles: All projectiles bounce on enemy hits being able to hit another target.
• Bouncing Projectiles: All projectiles bounce on wall hits being able to hit another target.
• Energy Shield: Gain a shield that reduces your incoming damage based on your maximum energy. 1 damage reduction per 4 max endurance. Damage reduction can't exceed a maximum of 8. Shield recharges after 60 defeated enemies.
• Swift Cast: Your dodge is increased by +3. Movementspeed +10%. Projectile Damage +50%. Melee Damage +50%.
• Powerful Cast: Your projectile damage is increased. Projectile Damage +200%
• Knowledge of protection: Max Health +3. Max Energy +1. Energy Regeneration +100%
• Blink: When dodging you are spawning an echo of your self living for 6s performing range attacks on nearby enemies.

Goladir

• Strong Hands: Your Endurance and Endurance Regeneration is drasitcally increased. Max Endurance +3, Endurance Regeneration +200%
• Armored: Max Health +6
• Powerful Slash: Your melee Damage is increased. Melee Damage +200%
• Agile Attacks: Attackspeed +100%. Melee Damage +50%. Projectile Damage +50%.
• Hammerstorm: Instead of attacking you spawn Cycling hammers that surround you triggering all your melee on attack and on hit effects. This will deactivate other melee attack replacer skills.
• Uber Slash: Critical Hit Damage +300%, Critical Hit Chance +10%
• Ground Slam: All your melee hits trigger a shockwave that applies minor knockback to all enemies.
• Leap: Instead of dodging you perform a jump that triggers a massive shockwave dealing damage and knockback to all enemies. Damage scales with your melee and projectile Damage. Size scales with your AoE size.
• Fortress: You can not dodge anymore. Instead all your incoming damage is decreased by -50%.
• Endurance Shield: Gain a shield that reduces your incoming damage based on your maximum endurance. 1 damage reduction per 4 max endurance. Damage reduction can't exceed a maximum of 8. Shield recharges after 60 defeated enemies.
• Arc of Might: Your melee weapon range is increased. Weapon Size +15%
• Cleave of Eternity: Your melee weapon range is increased. Weapon Size +20%

Dark Wanderer

• Skeleton Spiders: Each fallen enemy creates a skeleton spider companions that lives for 6 seconds.
• Poisoned Fangs: All companions apply poison condition on enemy hits.
• Explosion Pets : All permanent companions trigger explosions when attacking enemies. Damage scales with your melee damage. Explosion size scales with AoE size.
• Greater Empowered Companions: Companion Damage +30
• Golem: Call a permanent golem companion. The golem performs melee and range attacks. Each range attack spawns 3 projectiles at once.
• Harpyie: Call 3 permanent Harpyie companions that attack enemies with range attacks.
• Bone Spear: Each Dodge creates a piercing bone spear that targets nearby enemies and pierces through all enemies in that direction. Damage scales with your companion, range and melee damage. Bone Spear size scales with your AoE size.
• Loopwarden: Summon two flying companions that orbit around you dealing companion contact damage and destroying enemy projectiles. Orbit radius scales with your AoE size.
• Bone Shield: Gain a shield that protects you from 3 damage and recharges after 40 defeated enemies.

Rogue

• Raining Arrows: Each attack triggers raining arrows. Damage scales with melee damage. Size scales with your AoE size.
• Poison Reflex: Your dodge triggers a huge poison nova that deals damage equal to your melee and range damage and applies poison condition to enemies. Size scales with your AoE size.
• Ultimate Precision: Increases your Critical hit chance +15% and your critical hit damage by +20%.
• Deadly Precision: Increases your Critical hit chance +10% and your critical hit damage by +30%.
• Sharpened Focus: Increases your Critical hit chance +10% and your critical hit damage by +50%.
• Poison Ricochet: Each enemy hit triggers a poison ricochet projectile that deals projectile and melee damage and applies poison condition to enemies.
• Causitic Wounds: All your weapon attacks apply poison condition on enemy hits.
• Deep Wounds: All your weapon attacks apply burning condition on enemy hits.
• Evasion: You have a 20% chance to evade half of the incoming damage when getting hit. Damage can't be reduced below 1.
• Evasion Mastery: You have a 30% chance to evade half of the incoming damage when getting hit. Damage can't be reduced below 1.

Darokin

• Radiance: Each attack casts glaring light that damages nearby enemies. Damage scales with projectile and melee damage. Size scales with your AoE size.
• Radiant Wisp: On Dodge spawn radiant wisp companion that lives for 20s shooting light rays. Light ray damage scales with your range and melee damage.
• Solar Surge: All range and melee attacks triggers up to 6 light rays. Damage scales with your projectile and melee Damage. Size scales with your AoE size.
• Wall of Light: Dodging creates a wall of light that destroys enemy projectiles. Wall of Light damages all enemies that pass trough the wall scaling with your melee and range damage and inflicts burning condition. Wall of Light is active for 5s.
• Fountain: +200% Energy Regeneration + 200% Endurance Regeneration
• Boundless Reach: Your AoE size and melee weapon range is increased. AoE size increased +40%. Weapon Size +15%
• Dual Force: Increasing your melee and projectile damage. Increased Melee Damage +150%. Increased Projectile Damage +150%.
• Aegis of Ruin: If you have trinkets equipped your incoming Damage is decreased by 50% but each enemy hit destroys one of your trinkets. Damage can't be reduced below 1.
• Solar Touch: Your melee and ranged weapon hits apply burning condition to enemies.
• Everburn Wisp: Spawn permanent radiant wisp companion shooting light rays. Light ray damage scales with your projectile and companion damage.
• Sharpened Focus: Increases your Critical hit chance +10% and your critical hit damage by +50%.

Farmer

• Cluckocalypse: You call 3 permanent chicken companions that fight for you attacking your enemies with melee attacks.
• Chicken Herd: You call additional 2 permanent chicken companions and empower your companions. Increased Companion damage +10
• Feather Dash: Each dodge spawns a big temporary chicken companion that lives for 12s and has ranged and melee attacks.
• Greater Empowered Companions: Your companion damage is increased. Companion Damage +30
• Chicken Nest: Your melee and range attacks have a 20% chance to spawn a chicken nest for 4s that periodically deals AoE damage to surrounded enemies each 2 seconds. At the end of livetime the nest spawns a temporary big chicken companion that lives for 12 seconds and does melee and range attacks.
• Protective Shell: Gain a shield that absorbs damage based on the maximum health you have. 1 damage absorption per 4 health with a maximum absorption of 10. Shield recharges after 50 defeated enemies.
• Winter Weight: Winter is coming. Max Health +8. Max Dodge -1. Movementspeed -5%
• Sharp Beaks: All companions cause bleeding condition on enemy hits.
• Explosive Companions: All permanent companions trigger explosions on enemy hits.
• Regain: Energy Regeneration +300%. Endurance Regeneration +300%

Unknown Wanderer Melee

• Shattering Blast: All melee hits create 3 shattering projectiles that deal melee damage.
• Howl: Call 3 permanent wolf melee companions
• Empowered Ailments: Increased condition damage. Condition Damage +20.

Unknown Wanderer Ranged

• Horde: Call 3 permanent ranged companions

Character Starting Weapons

New Trinket

Game Mode Separation

Tree of Light Redesign

Crafting Potential

Performance Improvements

Improved skill connection design

Major Changes and Improvements

• Game Load System: The game loading system got major reworks and improvements, you will notice that loading up the game will be much faster, and also switching between scenes in the main menu and character selection will be much more fluid.
• League and Season save file system got reworked to more efficiently load and read your save files. In the past when you had already plenty of seasonal save files the loading times could take up multiple seconds. With the new save file loading system you will be able to load you save files nearly instant.
• Map delve count now got tooltips, to explain what this user interface icon displays.
• New softcore and hardcore icons have been added to in game user interface to display if you are currently playing hardcore or softcore
• Weapon Resource Cost Changes: All weapons have received a global resource cost rebalancing to make very fast and weak weapons viable. Basically all slower and medium paced weapons have received an elevated resource cost by at least 1 point while keeping fast and weaker weapons like daggers or bows at resource cost of 1. The starting endurance and energy levels, as well as the regenerations have been increased to compensate for this change. This rebalancing has been applied to all echo weapons likewise.
• Game Difficulty Rebalancing: Enemy HP scaling has been slightly increased to compensate for player power gain from new specialisations. Therefore the boss shield duration scaling has been reduced so that in endgame shield durations and the required hits to shatter boss shields are drastically reduced.
• Boss Shield Rebalancing: To compensate for slightly higher enemy hp scaling and prevent very long boss shield times the boss shield scaling has been reduced by 33% and now has a cap at 40. As an example getting to map delve level 50 would lead to 52 boss shield charges. With this change map delve level 50 would lead only to 35 shield charges.
• Improved Boss Shields in Rifts: Boss shield charges for Rift bosses now scale with your rift level instead of the map delve level.
• Tooltips improvements: Tooltips are now hidden when changing input type from mouse to keys or controller to prevent multiple active tooltips after input type switch.
• You will now respawn with the last equipped attack type
• Improved level up visual effect.

Balancing

• All echo weapons now have elevated base resource cost of 2 (was 1 before) with the exception of daggers and bow which are now the archetypes for faster but weaker weapons
• Echo Weapon Bow now has decreased base damage to 8 (was 10) but remains at base energy cost of 1 (would have been 2 after rebalancing)
• Echo Crossbow has increased base damage to 10 (was 8) base energy cost is 2 (rebalancing)
• Echo Dagger gets reduced base endurance cost of 1 (would be 2 after rebalancing)
• Glaring Light now scales with melee damage only (no projectile damage)
• Incrased AoE size skill node now increases AoE size by 15% (was 25% before)
• After each fully completed descent defense instance the tower abilities are reset. The damage upgrades however carry over to the next descent defense instance.

Balancing Character Starting Stats

• Darokin starting character stats: Energy/Endurance Regeneration -20% (was -50%), attack speed -10% (was -35%). Glaring Light starting ability was moved to character specialisations.
• Goladir starting character stats now has one projectile (did not have a projectile before).
• Heleja starting charcter stats now does not have an additional projectile multiplicator (had 1 before). This was moved to the new starting weapon.
• Farmer starting stats now has attack speed +20 % (was +10%), max health -1 (was -2 before) Chicken companions got moved to character specialisation and new starting weapons.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug that caused conditions to initially only be applied for 1 second in some cases instead of the initial max duration like 9s for poison
• Fixed a memory leak in replicating projectile skills and weapons
• Fixed replicating projectiles not aiming at enemies
• Fixed a bug that caused projectiles that scaled with multiple sources to only scale with one source (i.e. scaling with melee and range damage)
• Fixed player damage numbers not beeing displayed on certain conditions
• Fixed awakened gatekeeper leaderboard not updating correctly
• Fixed being able to claim final reward in aeodra arena challenge when final boss was not yet defeated.

We have already shared some hints on what will await you with the upcoming specialisation content update for Striving for Light. You might have asked yourself how this will look in action. What build possibilities this 8 new character specialisation skilltrees will open up? We are looking forward to answer all of that questions in the upcoming developer livestream at twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/deventide

Developer livestream on 27.11. at 7pm CET.

New Features:

• Reset Player Position: A new button has been added to the pause menu directly above the abandon run button. This "Reset Position" button allows to activate a special rescue mode that will recover your player when it got stuck inside walls or world objects.

Bugfixes:

• Fixed a bug that caused transmute/gamble item tooltips to stay open once a item was selected.
• Fixed multiple re-teleport triggers when playing coop on world events that have multiple waves (i.e. devouring darkness or sanguine chest)
• Fixed a crash in coop mode that was caused by the re-teleportation in world events
• Fixed a bug that caused shard of conjunction connections be saved and create unintentional long connections through the entire skilltree
• Fixed a bug that prevented you to spend your skill points when exiting the skilltree with shard of conjunction selection active
• Fixed a bug that caused skill gem placement and skill tree shard placement effects to not get reset when they got terminated by exiting the skilltree

Even though we have just released our largest content update till date around 3 week ago we are already working full force on the next content update for Striving for Light. Timeframe for this update will definately be this year. Probably around end of November/ very early December. There will be a new Season 16 start with the update launch for obvious reasons. With the Specialisation Content Update we will continue our latest path in reworking our player characters. And what would be a better fit than adding character specialisations to all characters to not only double the amount of exisiting skill nodes with new, very powerfull skills, but also make character choices more meaningful and gameplay defining. Furthermore we will separate the softcore and hardcore meta progression so that you can have two active characters for each season with separate meta progression for each game mode. As cherry on top we introduce some major systems rework based on the plenty of recent player feedback. Thanks to everyone taking the time and sharing your impressions, thoughts and feedback <3. Please note that all presented here is still in active development, and everything is subject to change.

New Features

Character Specialisations

Character Redesign

Game Mode Separation

Major Changes

Weapon Resource Cost Rebalancing

Difficulty Scaling

Refunding Changes

Attack Modifier Skills

Crafting Potential

Further Changes

Bugfixes:

• Fixed a crash when starting phoenix egg world events while your light fragments have dropped below 3 on the current map.
• Fixed replicating projectiles of Lightning Staff not working (v.0.9.6.0d)

Development means to make steps forward, but not each step might be in the right direction. We are aware of this and therefore we pay close attention to your player feedback and re-evaluate all changes and ideas we have pushing this game forward.

Major Changes

• Reverted back the softcore behaviour of the 0.9.6 update as it turned out to trivialise gameplay up to a point we did not intend, that would lead to further balancing issues. Gatekeepers and bosses will gain back their shields when you get defeated in softcore mode.

With Update 0.9.6 we are reworking and improving some major areas of the game based on the massive player feedback we have received recently. First-off thank you very much for your spent time to share your feedback. This is something we value a lot and we hope that this is reflected in our patch notes.

Major Changes and Improvements

New Gameplay Tutorial:

Improved Softcore Mode:

Improved Crafting:

Improved Difficulty Tiers:

Improvements to Echo Weapons:

• Changed staff echo weapon base projectile range to 80% (was 100%)
• Changed bow echo weapon base projectile range to 100% (was 80%)
• Information that echo weapon is already existing is now not directly displayed when you have crafted the echo weapon.
• Added information on what echo weapons are and how they work to the craft echo weapon window.

Further Improvements:

• Added text info to sky forge that states if crafting failed or was successful
• Delete save file window got a new ui
• Corrupted weapon drop rate has been increased
• The base ascending chance in the sky forge got increased
• The enemies in descent expedition of the activated room now vanish if you get defeated in softcore mode, preventing from double amount of enemies spawn when re-entering the room.
• Fixed rounding error on damage difference display for altering weapon base power with shard of power
• Improved magic shield ability description to describe that the shield destroys enemy projectiles.
• Improved tooltip and focus on darokin transmute UI (former known as gamble).

Bugfixes:

• Fixed a bug that caused shards of power not to be able to roll weapon base damage to the full potential that was able to be reached by upgrading a weapon to legendary or ascended quality
• Fixed wrong attackspeed values displayed at the craft echo weapons UI.
• Fixed legendary trinket shapeshift stats being wrongly reverted on using portals or switching weapons
• Fixed echo shards being saved after the animation delay on game over screen. Now they are saved directly preventing from loosing echo shards when pressing continue right away.
• Fixed legacy level in build viewer not being displayed.
• Fixed a bug that caused elite enemy to spawn with wrong probability
• Fixed wrong attack animation after deactivating a melee attack replacer skill node like trembling ground
• Fixed all achievements tab not accessibe with controller input

Major Features and Improvements

• Added new tooltips to scaling icons on weapons

Balancing Changes:

• Reduced tutorial boss HP and movement speed
• No elite enemies will now spawn in the tutorial level
• Decreased required hits for emerald widow eggs to 5 (was 6)

Bugfixes:

• Fixed rogue character unlocking when defeating shadow rogue at any level (should only unlock after level 40).
• Fixed earth riftboss unintentionally spawning spider eggs
• Fixed multiple coop characters spawning when spamming the coop activation button
• Fixed coop mode being able to be activated multiple times
• Fixed weapon layer on melee unknown wanderer to prevent being visible even behind world objects
• Fixed gatekeeper portal at spawn position leading back to level (did somehow lead to city Ankerath)
• Fixed range echo weapons not displaying damage scaling icon on tooltips

Major Changes and Improvements

• Decrease minimum distance for projectiles to move until they can trigger on hit effects

• Fixed a bug that caused one player character in coop mode to not use the correct range/melee attack assignment, resulting in one character not attacking until switching scenes.
• Fixed companions not following Player. There was a recursion in the latest udpate.
• Fixed secret sheep dialog displaying wrong dialog after multiple interactions
• Fixed wrong legendary ability description for ravaging companion on attack and the ravaging companions skill node

Working on major improvements for the save file system I made a mistake that lead to unintended re-initialisation of loaded save files in the latest hotfix 0.9.5.10c. I have rolled back this update immediately after noticing a few minutes later. Some got affected by this update and might have lost progress. First off, sorry for the inconvenience this might has caused you. If you have lost substantial amount of progress, please reach out to me via discord or the bugreport button on the main menu, and I will try to see what I can do to restore your progress. The good news is that I was able to fix some major issues with the save file system making it more robust and fail safe for the future. Especially for upcoming timed events like races or mini leagues or mini seasons. Furthermore this update brings improvements to critical hit damage number visibility as well as plenty highly anticipated improvements and bugfixes.

Major Changes and Improvements

• Critical hit damage numbers now have a different colour scheme and are more orange tinted to make them better distinguishable from the remaining damage numbers. The critical hit damage number animation was also updated to make them stand out more compared to normal damage numbers. Let us know how you like this change, we are open to iterate on this based on your feedback.
• The Race Event system and how save files are handles has been improved. Preventing unintended switch of an offline save file to the race save file. A new system was implemented that checks if your offline save file is currently saved as race save file, if this is the case it will be converted back as normal offline save file.
• Highlighted Cursor is now deactivated by default for new players, since the Windows OS has some issues displaying the software cursor in fullscreen mode. If you are having this issue this windows mouse setting might solve it for you: [olist]
• Click on start and then go to control panel.
• Then click on mouse.
• Uncheck the option Enhance Pointer Precision. [/olist] If this still does not bring back your cursor navigate to the options menu -> display via keyboard and toggle the highlighted cursor option to reset behaviour.
• Lowered the maximum possible zoom in for player camera
• Implemented new UI for first online/offline choice window on first game start up
• Weapon resource cost on tooltips now do not display decimal values

Bugfixes

• Fixed crashes on opening leaderboard build viewer for some builds
• Fixed permanent companions duplicating when exchanging weapons
• Fixed wrong weapon attack resource cost in stats window
• Fixed a bug when dying in the tutorial level on softcore mode would incorrectly update your shields and not update your initial player stats. This resulted in incorrect initial damage stats.
• Fixed echo weapons resource cost for upgraded echos not being applied on attacks (you might now find strong echo weapons that exceed your current resources now, just to keep this in mind)
• Fixed currency inventory hot showing the amount of collected map shards and weapon shards
• Fixed abandon run button not being able to be accessed via controller input
• Fixed enemies spawning outside of map (let me know if you still found enemies outside the map)
• Fixed emerald widow spawning wrongly oriented AoE effects
• Fixed event border colliders to prevent player character being able to glitch out of non-exit world events
• Fixed tree collider to prevent player character getting stuck
• Fixed range projectile shooting direction offset when using mouse input. (v.0.9.5.11b)

Major Changes and Improvements

• Highlighted Cursor is now deactivated by default for new players, since windows has some issues displaying the software cursor on some windows versions. If you encounter this issue navigate to the options menu -> display via keyboard and uncheck the highlighted cursor option.

Bugfixes:

• Fixed a bug when dying in the tutorial level on softcore mode would incorrectly update your shields and not update your initial player stats. This resulted in incorrect initial damage stats.

Bugfixes

• Fixed glaring light damage not directly updating when picking additional melee and projectile damage
• Fixed missing translation for the sky forge

Major Changes and Improvements

• All projectiles created by alternative spawners like slingshot additional projectiles or scattering projectiles now have increased max range to trigger on hit effects. This is limited for performance reasons and to prevent unintended offscreen chain reactions. You should find your additional projectiles created triggering on hit effects much more consistently now.
• Improved the display and glow effect for Echo Weapons on all UI.
• Gamble was now consistently renamed to transmute for Darokin Dialog and UI
• Increased space between skygems and fragments of light on UI to prevent covering on light charge counts >100

Bugfixes

• Fixed weapon tooltips for legendary weapons showing ascended skill container
• Fixed a possible crash when switching scenes shortly before death
• Fixed a crash when switching to skilltree and stats window was open when using non controller input
• Fixed wrong calculated weapon resource cost on ascended weapons
• Fixed charge range attack replacer effect active by default
• Fixed not enough resources hint in skilltree not taking ascended weapon cost into account
• Fixed skill tree node search tutorial not being able to complete on controller input

[previewyoutube=iqCTeyo-2uU;full][/previewyoutube] It would be an awesome support if you share it with everyone that might enjoy the game.

Major Changes and Improvements

• Random world events on maps now have a new randomisation behaviour resulting in all world events having the same chances to spawn. This is especially notable for the new trial events. They should all now have the equal chances to spawn.
• Challenge Window now has new UI and fixed scaling behaviour
• Added light rays to Tree of Light
• New Color grading system that Color grades the map backgrounds on faded maps and in rifts so that they look exactly like the backgrounds in normal maps
• Improved Descent Defense Projectile visibility

Balancing:

• Emerald Widow eggs required hits to destroy have been reduced to 6 (was 8)
• When activating "Prolonged" upgrade in Descent Defense the additional wave from the latest segment will automatically be completed, allowing you to directly start the new segment. As this would allow to just wait for the last defence segment and then apply the upgrades, the cost of the prolonged upgrades now increase by 10 sky gems with each additional segment. The same was applied for the intensify upgrade that now is more expensive when purchased later on to compensate for the lesser risk you take when upgrading on the last defence segment.
• Reduced duration of fire trial and Fire Rift boss following fire projectiles

Bugfixes

• Fixed difficulty tier 2 not unlocking
• Fixed wrong player icon for goladir character
• Fixed projectiles directly colliding with wall when standing just below a wall and shooting in downwards direction
• Fixed being able to switch to skilltree after death which could lead to crashes
• Fixed disabled y sorting in Ankerath, which did made world objects not layer properly with player character
• Fixed bug in descent defence that could lead to a crash when bosses start spawning on higher defense waves
• Fixed clipping shoulder with weapons on new player characters
• Fixed temporal companions not following player
• Fixed Rotational Earth Boulders on Earth Trial being covered by ground and invisible on spawn
• Fixed Moonblade and Sunorb AoE effects interrupting animations
• Fixed possible crash when having permanent companions and switching to skilltree
• Fixed melee attack replacer skills applying wrong animations for boomerang/ cyclic might for some weapons

Major Changes and Improvements

• Pause Menu now has updated UI elements
• League selection/ Savegame Manager window UI has been updated
• Join Create Private/Public League Window UI has been updated and improved
• Decreased interaction hint of various portal world objects portal
• Increased projectile size of Twilight Quiver legendary trinket ability
• Skilltree node search highlight now uses a slightly tuned down green tone
• Improved options menu text alignement for all translations

Bugfixes

• Fixed trial events ground tiles covering traps and other world elements
• Fixed wrong squished enemy AoE effects
• Fixed interacting with crafting window game overlay triggers attacks
• Fixed interacting with sky forge ui window triggers attacks
• Fixed melee attack properly reverting after deactivating an attack replacer skill node
• Fixed double trigger of sfx on echo ballista attacks
• Fixed tree of light node could be unspeced with wrong conditions
• Fixed persistent trail of Nature Calls legendary trinket ability after shapeshifting back to normal form
• Fixed trinket stats window screen overflow when exchanging trinkets and navigating with arrow keys or gamepad
• Fixed translation fonts for trinket stats being too big causing screen overflow
• Fixed clipping font in save game manager for all translations

Major Changes and Improvements

• Restructured Options menu with sub caption to make it easier for new players to find the options they are looking for
• Implemented the new UI design for the unlock new weapons and skills windows

Bugfixes

• Fixed wrong controller hints for gamepad to switch between pages in the skillgem window LB-> LT
• Fixed translation fonts not being correctly set on world object interaction hints, resulting in empty labels
• Fixed translation fonts not being correctly set on dialog boxes, resulting in empty labels
• Fixed stats window pages not being able to be switched on gamepad by using LT/RT buttons
• Fixed options menu displaying wrong controller hints RT/LT -> RB/LB
• Fixed wrong controller hints in achievements menu

Update 0.9.5.5 has lead to some crashes when having the stats window open while changing trinkets weapons and skills. You might have noticed that we have reverted the latest patch until we have fixed this recursion. This Update fixes these crashes and brings some further improvements to Striving for Light.

Major Changes and Improvements:

• Added the light rays for all trial world events back, as we know found the root cause of the performance issues on rift content update launch.
• Stats window and crafting window is now updated when you open them as overlay and exchange weapons or trinkets while windows remain open
• Added additional descriptions to the rift keys that the rifts can be accessed in the city Ankerath to prevent confusion.
• Added additional UI information that the rift in Ankerath has opened
• Improved brightness and contrast of legendary and ascended weapon UI frame to make it stand out more
• Improved weapon tooltips, legendary weapon ability names now use hyphenate to prevent weird line wrapping
• Dropped Echo Weapon now are saved in the world with their exact echo type

Bugfixes:

• Fixed a crash that could occur when picking up new trinkets when having stats window overlay open
• Fixed a crash that could occur when having the stats window overlay open when switching to the skilltree and applying skill points
• Fixed negative damage values for weapon tooltips at the blacksmith of ankerath
• Fixed weapon tooltips could show that a weapon is corrupted when having 4 weapon stats, even though it is not corrupted
• Fixed a bug that made it possible to remove corruption status of weapon with crafting
• Fixed crafting window in skilltree could block buttons above the crafting window
• Fixed blocked melee weapon button on crafting window
• Fixed a bug that caused weapons to roll higher base damage than they could normally roll when upgrading to higher rarity with shard of quality
• Fixed decimal damage numbers in legendary weapon ability tooltips
• Fixed sanguine chest not being able to be exited with taking 1 damage
• Fixed sanguine chest event not removing from minimap once completed
• Fixed heart UI clipping out of HP bar when having 6 max health
• Fixed wrong applied glow Colors for melee echo weapons

We could not wait to deliver these fixes and improvements to all of you.

Major Changes and Improvements

• Stats window and crafting window is now updated when you open them as in game overlay and exchange weapons or trinkets while windows remain open

Bugfixes

• Fixed negative damage values for weapon tooltips at the blacksmith of Ankerath when unlocking weapons

Post Race Event Rebalancing for Season 15. It might be the end of the 48h Race Event but Season 15 has just started with fresh Softcore and Hardcore Leaderboards to conquer. We spent a lot of time fixing all emerging issues during the event time. If you encounter any further issues please report them on our discord. Or via the bug report button in the main menu. Now we wish everyone good luck and a lot of fun diving into Season 15!

Balancing Changes for Rifts:

• Slightly increased enemy hp scaling in rifts.
• Reduced traps amount in rifts.

Major Fixes:

• Fixed video memory spike caused by rift content udpate regression

Major Changes and Improvements:

• Increased corrupted weapon drop rate on corrupted maps by +80% (they have been quite rare)

Bugfixes:

• Fixed out of map teleport after completing a rift
• Fixed shard of instability being able to craft 4 weapon stats, displaying the weapon as corrupted weapon even though it is not.
• Removed the reach level 150 seasonal challenge so that the challenge leaderboard is able to update again
• Fix for craft all echo weapon challenge not unlocking
• Fixed not found references that could lead to stuttering on map load
• Fixed companions not following you after switching maps (v.0.9.5.3a)

Bugfixes

• Fixed huge memory leak for all companions with limited life duration - you should experience massive performance improvements when playing anything that heavily relies on minions
• Fixed map stats for increased damage being applied to rifts
• Fixed wrong % display of melee and range damage in character tooltip
• Fixed wrong damage calculation in echo weapons
• Fixed wrong teleport destination after completing a rift when you have been in gatekeeper arena
• Fixed shard of quality re-forging a legendary weapon multiple times when trying to upgrade the weapon to ascended quality

Improvements and Major Changes

• All enemies and traps now have deactivated animations when out of sight, which should lead to performance improvements. Please let us know if you encoutner weird enemy behaviour.
• Deactivated trial effects for improved performance (shader compilation)

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug that caused a crash when unlocking weapons
• Fixed wrong calculated enemy melee damage on higher map tiers
• Fixed range projectiles colliding with upper walls when standing close
• Fixed map damage applied on rifts
• Fixed rift progress UI being active after completing rift
• Fixed persistant rift scaling on the current active map after completing a rift
• Fixed decimal values on tooltips
• Fixed corrupted trinket not displaying +1 received damage stat information

Bugfixes

• Fixed crash on unlocking weapons and empty weapon unlock selection
• Fixed wrong portal destinations
• Fixed range attack mouse aim offset
• Fixed remaining echo weapon fragment icons on minimaps
• Fixed crash when viewing challenges
• Performance improvements for ranged companions (v.0.9.5.0e)
• Fixed Legendary Weapons having second legendary ability UI visible (v.0.9.5.0e)
• Fixed skilltree tutorial caption not being hidden when all tutorial have been completed (v.0.9.5.0e)
• Fixed treasure goblin dropping loot outside the map (v.0.9.5.0e)
• Fixed interrupted awaken gatekeeper leaderboard update (v.0.9.5.0f)
• Fixed temporarily wrong calculated weapon resource cost after crafting when using the in game crafting overlay (v.0.9.5.0f)
• Fixed not working rift sub 4 challenge (v.0.9.5.0g)
• Fixed crash when entering awakened gatekeeper arena (v.0.9.5.0h)
• Fixed a crash that can occur when starting trial event with less then 3 light fragments (v.0.9.5.0j)

We are happy to release the largest update Striving for Light has ever seen. You might have already got a first impression of the major features coming to Striving for Light with the Rift Content Update, but behold this update has even more in store for you! To celebrate this update release we will host a 48h rift race event where everyone (even with the free demo can join) and also 14 days steam sale. With this update we are also starting EA-Season 15.

Release Race Event - Season 15

New Features

Rift Endgame System

Rift Trials

Ascended Weapons

Corruption System

Echo Weapons and Echo Crafting System

Redesigned Player Characters

Interaction Hints

New Evolution Weapon + Rework

Corrupted Trinket - Wraps of Dread

Currency Inventory

Reimagined UI

Improved Tutorials

Redesigned Skill Visuals

Balancing

• Male Unknown Wanderer starting stats now have additional +10% dodge regeneration and +10% crit damage
• Female Unknown Wanderer starting stats now have +3 companion damage and +10% movement speed
• Increased base movement speed of all player characters by +5%
• Increased Ice Staff Projectile Speed
• Increased Light Staff Projectile Speed
• Trasure Goblins now have half HP to make chasing goblins worth it
• Rebalanced Noctelle Bossfight, Noctelle now spawns less AoE fields
• 100 Bloodchest seasonal challenge has been removed

Major Improvements and Changes

• Range Companions now attack faster and the projectiles have more range and faster movement speed
• Performance improvements in skilltree
• Redesigned enemy AoE effects for improved perspective, utilising new shaders for improved performance and improved visibility
• Redesigned main menu
• Player Movement Animation has been reworked to fix delayed animation starts what made movement feel less responsive
• Invincibility after Teleport: Player Character is now invincible for 3s after teleporting to a new map or teleporting back into a map when you got defeated in softcore
• Leaderboards are now available in the city plaza even on offline save games (the empty plaza looked kind of awkward, and now offline play can also check out the builds and leaderboards).

Bugfixes

RIFT RACE EVENT

We are hosting a 48h Rift Race Event which will take place at the 25th-27th October 2024 starting and ending at 7pm CEST.

Unique Twist

Participate with Demo Version

Dynamic Price Pool

Price Pool

• 1. Place: 50% of price pool + Design Weapon/Skill/Trinket together with the devs which will be implemented into the game.
• 2. Place: 30% of price pool
• 3. Place: 20% of price pool
• 4.- 6. Place: Striving for Light: Steam Key

How to participate

• Join the Igniting Spark Games discord & introduce yourself in #rift-race
• Please stick to fairplay, no cheating, no offensive player names, violation will result in disqualification of this and future events

How to win

• Complete seasonal challenges to earn challenge points, the player with the most challenge points wins!

Special Features:

• New challenges featuring the new content of the rift content update.
• You can fully play the whole treasure race event with the Striving for Light Demo.
• Dynamic Price Pool: So invite all your friends and your favourite content creators to increase the price pool!
• Refined challenges. We removed the 100 bloodstained chest challenge :)
• Race is hardcore only

Changes

• Implemented Race Event Banner for upcoming Rift Race Event
• Preparations for Rift Content Update

It is no secret by now that we have been working tirelessly over the past few months on the largest update Striving for Light has ever seen. We're thrilled to finally share a preview of what's coming your way with the "Rift" Content Update.

Release Date

Release Race Event - Season 15

New Features

Rift Endgame System

Rift Trials

Ascended Weapons

Corruption System

Echo Weapons and Echo Crafting System

Redesigned Player Characters

Interaction Hints

New Evolution Weapon + Rework

Corrupted Trinket - Wraps of Dread

Currency Inventory

Reimagined UI

Major Improvements and Changes

• Redesigned enemy AoE effects for improved perspective, utilising new shaders for improved performance and improved visibility
• Redesigned main menu
• Player Movement Animation has been reworked to fix delayed animation starts what made movement feel less responsive
• Invincibility after Teleport: Player Character is now invincible for 3s after teleporting to a new map or teleporting back into a map when you got defeated in softcore
• Further minor improvements
• Countless bugfixes

Bugfixes:

• Fixed a crash related to the added tree of light legacy skill nodes.

With update 0.9.4.6 we are adding a new long awaited feature that lets you modify the skill spawn chance of skills in the skilltree by 4 new legacy skill nodes available at the tree of light.

New Features:

• Modify Skill Spawn Chances: 4 new legacy skill nodes have been added to the tree of light that can be used to modify the skill spawn chances of certain skill types like melee, ranged, companions or condition damage skill nodes.
  
  
  
  This should make it possible to target specific builds even when you fully unlocked all the available skills and have more control over the skill tree randomness. Note that there are as well plenty of skill tree shards that can be used strategically to shape your skilltree.
  

Improvements

• Improved range construct aim: Ranged constructs have received an improved aim algorithm to better target enemies.
• Improved hitboxes: Plenty of enemy and destroyable map objects have received improved hitboxes

Bugfixes:

• Fixed active abilities not being re-activated when switching the map (fixing also not running out effects of trinkets like Lifecasque)
• Fixed melee weapon damage not being updated directly when activating increased melee damage skill nodes
• Fixed a recently introduced but that caused the first dungeon level scale as if it was already floor 2, this is now fixed and should result in smoother leveling progression

With update 0.9.4.5 we are adding a new feature to skills and weapon unlocks many probably have waited for: a Reroll Option to skip certain unlocks especially early on new leagues/ events/ save files..

New Features:

• Reroll Unlock Choices: You can now reroll your unlock choices for weapon and skill unlocks. Yes, you have read correctly, from now one you can skip certain skills you do not want to unlock. The re-rolling will cost you 2 light fragments without changing it's cost. This will especially on new leagues or events make it possible to target specific builds early until you have farmed some more currency to make more extensive re-rolls of your skilltree possible for later runs.
  

Bugfixes:

• Fixed a bug that made it possible to enter the hideout and arena portal while having a dropped weapon focused which has duplicated the dropped item while entering the portal and also deleting your current carried weapon. This fix was already applied to all other portals, so therefore this bug should now be a Thing of the past. If you Encounter this on any portal just let us know.
• Fixed to many bursting companions respawn when changing the map
• Fixed missing unlock notification icons for skills sanguine shot/burst
• Fixed a bug that mad it possible to activate descent defense multiple times

Bugfixes:

• Fixed crash on reloading corrupted skilltree from save file
• Fixed a bug that caused map difficulty (delve count) to not be set correctly resulting in too low enemy hp scaling. Now on each start the delve count is updated and correctly set to the amount of already finished maps.
• Fixed skills not updading their stack count accurately

Thanks to everyone participating in the treasure race events and for spending your time reporting freedback and bugs. We took a step back and reworking the boss shield system.

New Features:

• Shielded Boss State: We have heared your feedback and decided to overhaul the boss shield system by implementing a new shielded state. Previously when dealing so much damage that you trigger the shield the boss has been immune to all sort of damage (beside the one or other bypassing bug). We understand that looking at a not changing health bar for a few seconds is unsatisfying. We therefore implemented a new damage reduction system that reduces all dealt damage to this boss by 90% for the duration his shield is active. So especially on high maps with higher shield durations this will be noticeable. We want to clearly state that our vision for boss fights is to retain a layer of challenge even on very well thought out, high dps builds. Please let us know your thoughts on this iteration of the boss shield system.
• Elite Goblins went core: As it seemed that everyone enjoyed the treasure race event, so we decided to roll the elite goblins into the core game. From now on every map you will have a small chance in encountering an elite goblin. Faded maps received another unique aspect as they come with a very high elite goblin spawn rate. Another reason to embrace the unpredictability.

Balancing:

• Condition Damage decay got increased to 40% (was 30% before)

Bugfixes:

• Fixed picking up a trinket deactivating your attack replacer skill node (like boomerang or cyclic might)
• Fixed corrupted light enemies getting hidden to early when running out of sight but still making it possible to hit you with their AoE attacks
• Fixed bypassing shields by dealing enough damage to one shot a boss
• Fixed a bug that caused faster companion spawns when switching scenes while pressing attack buttons on certain conditions

Bugfixes:

• Fixed condition damage ticks bypassing boss shields
• Fixed "slight" collider offset for sanguine shot :)

Improvements:

• Reworked companion AI: Companions now much faster detect enemies in range, companions have less idle time between attacks and double check if enemies are around to switch back to attack state immediately, companions also have received a bit larger enemy detect range

Bugfixes

• Fixed unlock description of buzz harbinger, this weapon drops from regular drop pool

Balancing

• Decreased trasure goblin max hp
• Increased treasure goblin max player detect range
• Abyssal Hunger has increased initial attack range
• Abyssal Hunger charge stack on hit loss has been reduced to 10 (was 20)
• Treasure Goblins have slightly reduced movement speed

Bugfixes

• Fixed empty tooltips on descent tower defense
• Fixed 1 condition damage tick to deal damage even if boss shield is active

Bugfixes:

• Fixed attack cooldown and trinket ability UI not working after switching to skilltree
• Fixed a crash in the demo version when playing in offline mode and triggering an achievement
• Fixed a missing translation tag on the moon blade weapon
• Fixed missing tooltips on the weapon shards in the crafting window
• Fixed enemies dropping items in the arena event

Update 0.9.4.3 has just dropped for Striving for Light adding a new special melee weapon as well as more soundtrack options. Quick reminder: we will host a 48h Treasure Race Event, if you missed that announcement you can read on how to participate here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1646790/view/4161968803625725157?l=english

New Features

Abyssal Hunger - New Melee Weapon

More Soundtrack Options

Listen on:

• Spotify
• Apple Music
• Amazon Music
• Youtube Music
• Deezer
• Tidal and many more!

Join the community!

We are thrilled to announce that the soundtrack for Striving for Light is now available on all major music streaming platforms!

Listen on:

• Spotify
• Apple Music
• Amazon Music
• Youtube Music
• Deezer
• Tidal and many more!

Cutting Dark

• Eternal Horizons

  
  Release on 21.6.2024 The album captures the beauty, power, and recovery of nature, telling a story of destruction and renewal through powerful and emotional melodies. [previewyoutube=GXV1C7dfmQA;full][/previewyoutube]

• Into the North

  
  Release on 5.7.2024 An evocative album that musically captures the harsh, icy landscapes and the rugged, untamed spirit of the northern wilderness. [previewyoutube=f6sNKdEVwlY;full][/previewyoutube]

Bugfixes:

• Fixed glaring light skill not scaling with projectile and melee damage as intended
• Fixed not removed minimap icons when completing world events
• Fixed not removed heart minimap icons when collecting hearts with petrified heart trinket active
• Fixed double triggered and overlapping skilltree tutorials with lost focus when playing with gamepad

New Challenges:

• New Challenge added, have gloomtide and sunfire sceptre weapons equipped
• New Challenge added, have sun orb and moon blade weapons equipped
• Upated Challenge, equipp 4 buzz keeper trinkets and the buzz harbinger (was play the dark wanderer before)

• Bugfixes:

  
  
• Fixed permanent player effects not being directly activated after extiting skilltree
• Fixed persistent treasure goblin minimap icons
• Fixed challenge unlock all weapons triggered to early

TREASURE RACE EVENT

We are hosting a 48h Treasure Race Event which will take place at the 14th-16th June 2024 starting and ending at 7pm CEST.

Unique Twist

Participate with Demo Version

Dynamic Price Pool

Price Pool

• 1. Place: 50% of price pool + Design Weapon/Skill/Trinket together with the devs which will be implemented into the game.
• 2. Place: 30% of price pool
• 3. Place: 20% of price pool
• 4.- 6. Place: Striving for Light: Survival Steam Key

How to participate

• Join the Igniting Spark Games discord & introduce yourself in #treasure-race
• Please stick to fairplay, no cheating, no offensive player names, violation will result in disqualification of this and future events

How to win

• Complete seasonal challenges to earn challenge points, the player with the most challenge points wins!

Special Features:

• Each map contains a special flying treasure goblin that can be hunt down for additional treasure. But beware some might fight back!
• You can fully play the whole treasure race event with the Striving for Light Demo.
• Dynamic Price Pool: So invite all your friends and your favourite content creators to increase the price pool!
• Refined challenges.
• Race is hardcore only

• New minimap icons for treasure goblins to better seperate them from map bosses

This patch fixes the reported crashes when having an attack replacer skill active and trying to pick up a new weapon. This bug wasn't straight forward to fix as it had some further hidden issues related to the recently introduced new scene management system.

Bugfixes:

• Fixed occuring crashes when picking up a new melee weapon when you had an attack replacer skill active (like cyclic might, melee constructs, ...)
• Fixed a bug that caused wrong attack animations to be activated when switching between different attack replacer skill nodes
• Fixed skill effects not being correctly activated when switching weapons, activating skill nodes or changing embedded legendary skill effects on your weapons

The ground trembled as rifts tore open across Ankerath, unveiling gateways to instable realms where only the bravest wanderers dared to venture. They sought to prove their might amongst others and forge yet uncovered legacies. A sneak peak of the upcoming 0.9.5 content update for Striving for Light.
New Features:

• A new mysterious rift has appeared... no one knows what has caused this rift to appear nor how it can be utilised...

• Fixed crashes related to pressing the unspent skill point UI button.

Improvements

• New map design for descent expedition maps (v.0.9.4.0b)
• Improved cloak animation for unknown wanderers (v.0.9.4.0d)

Bugfixs

• Fixed skill tree tutorial not being hidden after entering the skilltree for the first time
• Fixed missing translation tags for new weapons and weapon achievements
• Fixed kill streak frenzy UI not showing up (v.0.9.4.0b)
• Fixed greatsword always showing swing vfx (v.0.9.4.0b)
• Fixed crash when switching scenes on maps where centipede like enemies are present (v.0.9.4.0b)
• Fixed multiple cashes on switching to skilltree during fights (v.0.9.4.0b)
• The heart positions are now not only updated on the minimap overlay but also on the normal minimap, yes that feature was actually missing until now (v.0.9.4.0c)
• Fixed player minimap position and boss minimap positions hidden after scene switch (v.0.9.4.0c)
• Fixed crashes on scene transitions (v.0.9.4.0c)
• Fixed persistent damage numbers after scene switch (v.0.9.4.0c)
• Fixed initial skilltree tutorial not being hidden (v.0.9.4.0c)
• Fixed unspent skillpoint ui not being hidden (v.0.9.4.0c)
• Fixed further crashes on scene transitions (v.0.9.4.0d)
• Fixed crash when freezing enemeis with frozen vessel weapon (v.0.9.4.0d)
• Fixed skygems not being removed from minimap after pickup (v.0.9.4.0e)
• Fixed not updated player walk animation when walking while attacking (v.0.9.4.0f)
• Fixed bug related to freeze conditions (v.0.9.4.0g)

Join the community!

Content Update 0.9.4 has arrived and is full packed with a new arsenal of weapons enabling complete new playstyles, plenty of QoL improvements like overlay stats and crafting, faster skill tree and scene transitions and major memory leak fixes. With update 0.9.4 we are kicking of our Early Access Season 14 and are also announcing the upcoming 48h Cataclysm Race event where things are a bit .... different.

48h Cataclysm Race Event

New Features:

New Weapons

• Moonblade - Melee Weapon:
  Each attack casts an additional AoE in attack direction, damage scales with projectile damage. If carrying Sun Orb gain 2 sun orbs on attack, damage scales with melee damage.
• Sun Orb - Range Weapon:
  The projectile deal splash damage which scales with melee damage. If carrying Moonblade gain additional AoE on attack that scales with projectile damage.
• Gloomtide - Melee Weapon:
  Spawns two orbiting melee blades each 2 seconds without attacking. If carrying Sunfire Sceptre gain 1 additonal orbiting projectile. Both trigger all projectile/melee effects.
• Sunfire Sceptre - Range Weapon:
  Spawns an orbiting projectile each second without attacking. If carrying Gloomtide gain 1 additonal orbiting melee blade. Both trigger all projectile/melee effects.
• Buzz Harbinger - Range Weapon:
  Instead of projectiles each attack spawns bumble bee companions that move like your projectiles and scale with companion damage. 30% chance on enemy death to spawn a bumble bee companion for 6 seconds.

Overlay Stats/ Crafting

• You can now open and view the stats screen during gameplay by pressing the hotkey ("I" or "Z" button depending on your settings)
  
• You can now open the crafting window during gameplay by pressing the ("c" button)
  
• Added the new stats and crafting window options to the controller selection menu
  

Consolidated UI

• The energy ressource bar was moved to the bottom so that you can have energy/endurance and dodge charges as well as your trinket and attack cooldowns all at one place. Please let us know your thoughts on this change. We will closely listen to your feedback.
  

Major Reworks

• World and Skill tree are now cached which means no long loading times from switching between skill tree and gameplay anymore
• Fixed major memory leaks that could lead to degraded performance on long play time
• Performance improvements for projectile spawns.

Balancing

• Bumble Bee companions have reduced lifespan of 6 seconds (was 8 seconds before)
• Very minor increase in enemy hp for endgame
• Higher tier maps now spawn a little bit earlier

Join the community!

The very first playtest version for the upcoming 0.9.4 update is now available in the public playtest branch. Note that this playtest version does not reflect the amount of content that will be included in the 0.9.4.0 content update. As always there will be moar... This update is meant for testing these new QoL features ahead of time, to be able to fix all regressions that come with these huge changes. Help battle test the newest features and give feedback to help shaping this new update! Note that there most likely will be crashes so bring your bug net and get ready to catch some bugs !

New Features:

• You can now open and view the stats screen during gameplay by pressing the hotkey ("I" or "Z" button depending on your settings)
  
• You can now open the crafting window during gameplay by pressing the ("c" button)
  
• Added the new stats and crafting window options to the controller selection menu
  
• World and Skill tree are now cached which means no long loading times from switching between skill tree and gameplay anymore
• Fixed major memory leaks that could lead to degraded performance on long play time

Join the public beta branch:

Join the community!

Improvements:

• Improved border endboss arena wall colliders to prevent player getting stuck when moving near to walls and opening doorways
• Improved collision detection in endboss arena to prevent player and loot getting stuck in the arena wall
• Added system that moves player and loot towards the arena center if it got stuck on the wall collider

Bugfixes:

• Fixed not being able to view leaderboard on specific system language settings due to wrong converted digits (different floating point seperators)
• Fixed language selection in options menu showing wrong language

New Features:

Improved Defensive Layers for Bossfights

Improved fragment of light visuals:

Major Changes and Improvements:

• The new weapon slash effects are now a bit more transparent to cover less screen space and improve visibility.
• You can now zoom out more (v.0.9.3.1b)

Balancing:

• Improved hitboxes of Noctelle's dark ray attacks

Fixes:

• Fixed a crash on awakened gatekeeper spawn
• Fixed infrequent a crash on player death (v.0.9.3.1b)

With update 0.9.3.0 we are introducing a new defensive layer balancing system for boss fights, a new lighting system for ground textures and player character models, we are also adding complete new weapon slash effects into the game to make melee feel more impactful, adding localisation support for polish, turkish and russian and many further improvements and changes and bugfixes. We are also happy to announce that Striving for Light is now Steam Deck verified.

New Features:

Defensive Layers for Endboss Encounters:

New Lighting System for Textures and Player Models:

New Weapon Slash Effects:

New supported languages:

Steam Deck verified:

Dynamic Environment

Major Changes and Improvements:

• Companions can now break interactible world objects (like jars)
• Added support for 240Hz setting in the options menu
• Blade orbit tower attack now does not scale with player AoE size to prevent the attack from spawning outside the descent map
• Light Staff now has attack indicator glow
• Intensified shortsword attack indicator glow
• Fixed melee attack offset when attacking with the directional buttons on keys and gamepad
• Coop stone got its moss plants back
• Improved tree of light texture

Fixes:

• Fixed bug that spawned you into the gatekeeper arena when pressing F on a map
• Fixed final boss fight stage on awakened serpents spawning to early and triggering too many chests
• Fixed swamp crawler map boss misplaced hitbox
• Fixed unintended graphic glitch on serpent boss model

Fixes:

• Fixed coop player not being teleported into descent expedition events when one player enteres a room
• Fixed coop player triggered dodge skills spawning at player 1 position
• Fixed trinket stats not beeing added to the build inspector on the leaderboards (note that tree of light legacy skills are not taken into account on the build inspector)
• Fixed weird floating point values in crit stats of leaderboard build viewer
• Fixed darokins staff ranged weapon missing scaling with melee damage icon
• Fixed missing scaling with melee damage icon for glaring light skill

Challenges

• Added Tier 3 Challenge: Defeat the the Phoenix with Staff of the Phoenix and Sword of the Phoenix equipped

Improvements:

• Performance improvment for piercing blow attack
• Increased voice volume in reworked cinematic intro
• Trinket stats UI is now more responsive and centers itself vertically on the screen (v.0.9.2.0e)

Balancing:

• Ravaging companions now have a duration of 12s (had unlimited duration before).

Fixes:

• Fixed melee skills not spawning with correct spawn angle
• Fixed piercing blow despawn bug
• Fixed missing description tag for echo ballista
• Fixed missing achievement description tag for defeating Arda, the fallen
• Fixed random spawn angles not beeing applied to melee effects that spawned from other melee effects
• Fixed descent expedition tier 2 challenge reward not being triggered
• Fixed trinket stats flowing outside of screen bounds
• Fixed echo ballista projectiles not bouncing on enemy hits
• Fixed trinket stats UI not resizing properly (v.0.9.2.0e)
• Fixed Golden Lifecasque trinket bug not showing up duration UI on second activation (v.0.9.2.0e)
• Fixed a bug that could lead to Fortify active trinket ability remaining active after dying in softcore (v.0.9.2.0e)

Fixes:

• Fixed rare but where progress could carry over from other save files into the new challenge race save file
• Fixed crash on exchanging trinkets when dying
• Fixed to much map decorations spawn in faded map secret boss room
• Fixed descent defense prolong/intensify upgrades not being reset on successful completed event and destroyed tower
• Fixed wrong assigned sfx for completing challenges

Along all the new features we have already announced and showcased in our Eclipse content update patch notes preview there has been a feature that we felt needed some more attention and would bloat the patch notes, so we felt it would make most sense to give this new feature it's own news post. If you have missed our Eclipse Content Update announcement you can find out more about the update at this post: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1646790/view/4034731337929043009

Interaction icons for skills, weapons, trinkets and character tooltips:

Weapons

Trinkets

Skills

Characters

With Update 0.9.2 we are further preparing Striving for Light for it's approaching 1.0 release, not only adding new content like new pinnacle boss fights, weapons, skills and trinkets but also revisiting story content, adding things we wanted to do for ages and never found time for (looking at you map decorations), adding tons of improvements, balancing changes and fixes. So wanderers, behold what the Eclipse content update holds in store for you!
The Eclipse is releasing on 16th Feburary together with Season 13 and a 48h Challenge Race Event! The 48h Challenge Race event features new Seasonal Challenges and a new scoring system and a price pool free for all to join. If you want to join please register at our Official Discord.

New Features:

New Pinnacle Boss Fights

New Weapons

• Grimm Rebound [Range Weapon]: Projectiles bounce off walls and create a dark explosion on wall hit. Explosion scales with AoE size and projectile damage.
• Echo Ballista [Range Weapon]: Projectiles bounce off opponents and can hit another opponent.
• Poisoned Blight [Melee Weapon]: Hit enemies are poisoned and spread poison condition to nearby enemies when defeated.

New Trinkets

• Mirror of Deflection [Trinket]: All your projectiles are deflected on enemy hit allowing the same projectile to hit another target after deflection.
• Buzzkeeper [Trinket]: Each defeated enemy has a 25% chance to summon a bumblebee companion for the duration of 8s.
• Titans Essence [Trinket]: Increased Melee Attack Range: +10% (increases weapon size and range)
• Solaris Bell [Trinket]: Each enemy hit has a 25% chance to unleash a light ray. Damage is scaling with your melee and projectile damage.

New Skills

• Sanguine Shot [Range Skill]: Your projectiles create a bloody splash covering enemies behind the hit position dealing additional damage and applying bleeding condition to enemies. Damage scales with projectile damage. Size scales with AoE size.
• Sanguine Strike [Melee Skill]: Your melee hits create a bloody splash covering enemies behind the hit position dealing additional damage and applying bleeding condition to enemies. Damage scales with melee damage. Size scales with AoE size.

Map Decorations

New Story Content

• Rewritten Story Content: The whole story content got completely rewritten. A lot of dialogs were a bit dusty and written years ago when we first entered early access.
• Voice Acting: Complete new voice acting featuring professional voice actors.
• Intro Cinematic: Reworked intro cinematic.

Seasonal Challenges

Further New Features

• Trap Highlighting Option: You can now select highlight projectiles & traps from the option menu (it is enabled for new players) this option will give all traps a red outline to improve visibility and contrast
• New collision system for projectiles: With this new collision system for projectiles we have experienced a substantial increase in performance when playing projectile heavy builds.
• Performance Improvements for projectiles: The visibility check for projectiles have been removed which removes workload from the cpu.
• New Item Pick Up UI: The item pickup UI was completely reworked to make it more minimalistic and taking up less screen space
• Condition Damage Tick Info on Tooltips: Condition damage skills now show the calculated conditions damage for the first 3 ticks, also taking skill stacks into account. This should make it much more straight forward to understand the condition damage a skill will deal.

Historic Iconic Weapon Redesign

Thank you!

Major Changes and Improvements:

• Performance improvements for all centipede/snake/worm type enemies
• More responsive world events: World events are now updated much faster resulting in much less waiting time for new wave spawns or time until the event ends after the remaining enemies have been defeated
• Shield area of effect which deals 0 contact damage now hides the damage number completely to prevent causing confusion on which skills now did not deal any damage
• Corrected and improved tooltips descriptions
• Condition Effects are now pooled for improved performance
• Improved visuals for the Aeodra Arda, the fallen
• Added improved condition damage calculation and companion damage calculation to legendary weapon skill tooltips
• Condition hits from abilities now also trigger hit vfx to improve impact feel of the abilities
• Updated Skilltree Tutorials: All skilltree tutorials have been updated with new animations that showcase the skill gem placement and the usage of all available skillgems

Balancing:

• Scattering Projectiles now scatters into two projectiles on enemy hit (was 3 before)
• Maximum Area of Effect size cap got reduced to 3.0 (was 4.0)
• Increased Area of Effect Skill now grants +25% AoE size (was +30% before)
• Darokin's Staff [Range Weapon]: Light strike damage now scales with range and with melee damage (was only scaling with melee damage before)
• Glaring light is now triggering from melee and range attacks (was only triggering from melee attacks)
• Flood is now scaling with your melee and projectile damage and skill stacks (was only scaling with projectile damage and skill stacks)
• Legendary Weapon Skill Fragmentation on Hit now has possibility to trigger 30% (was 100% before)
• Discharge now deals 20 damage (was 10 damage)

Fixes:

• Fixed snake boss turn bug
• Fixed descent defense portal spawning multiple times when tower gets destroyed
• Fixed wrong skill tooltips for bleeding swirl and bleeding blade
• Fixed wrong calculated condition damage in tooltips
• Fixed enemy having weird glow on highlighted enemies setting activated
• Fixed crit damage spawning additional blood decals
• Fixed various of memory leaks
• Fixed missing NPC name when dialog from selection was activated
• Fixed not being able to attack after aborted dialog
• Fixed Rogue character not unlocking on defeating shadow farmer after level 40
• Fixed discrepancies between the description of the skill and the actual damage
• Fixed discrepancies between the description of the legendary embedded skills and the actual damage output
• Fixed wrong damage description of explosive potion trinket ability
• Fixed wrong image for Goladir tier 2 achievement
• Fixed wrong damage calculation for legendary weapon fragmentation skills
• Fixed a bug that caused applied conditions to be shared among multiple hit targets what caused faster damage decline and also shorter condition durations.
• Fixed projectiles not correctly scaling with melee damage

Fixes:

• Rolled back recent changes to world events as this caused some crashes

New Features:

• New Shard of Conjunction connection preview: With this new feature you will always see a preview of the exact connections the shard of conjunction will forge. No more guessing and try and error if the range will last.
  
• New designed legendary weapon minimap icon
  

Improvements and Major Changes:

• More responsive world events: All world events have new update systems that make them much more responsible and remove waiting times between waves or at the end of the events.
• Improved widescreen scaling of tree of light and descent defense UIs
• Interacting with the dialogs and UIs now does not trigger your attacks
• The numerical health values are now activated when you have more than 12 health (was 20 before)
• increased brightness of trinket ability duration UI

Balancing:

• Rebalanced enemy, boss, superboss & endboss HP scaling

Fixes:

• Fixed various UI notification elements blocking mouse input on pause menu

Major Changes and Improvements:

• Trade items at the merchant are now saved between game sessions. Restarting the game and re-visiting the merchant will now load the previous state of the trade UI.

Major Changes and Improvements:

• Stone boulders roll speed now no longer scales with projectile speed
• Improved tooltip description of Shard of Recast

Fixes:

• Fixed legendary embedded skill of range weapon applying cost to melee weapon and embedded skill of melee weapon applying cost to range weapon.
• Fixed attack speed not updating correctly after picking up a new range weapon
• Fixed trinket effects not being active directly after picking up a trinket (needed weapon swap or skill tree scene switch before in some cases)

Thanks to everyone participating in the race event or battle testing the pathfinder changes. Based upon your feedback and reports we have been working on a post-race patch with plenty of fixes and improvements for the just started Season 12. You can join season 12 in main menu top right over the league and save file manager.

Improvements:

• Shooting Trap Rework: Traps in the Frozen Lands and in the Caves have been reworked. Both traps now have much clearer attack indicators and prolonged charge time until they shoot. Both traps now shoot only 1 projectiles (was 3 projectiles before).
• Improved skill tooltips for condition damage. The old tooltips have been ancient and needed to actually reflect how condition damage works now.
• Added AoE cap information to AoE tooltips in stats window.
• The node search highlights now keep active when paning the skilltree

Balancing:

• Cutting Shot range skill now does now does not trigger additional melee attack and melee hit skills.
• Map shards have been added to descent defense and descent expedition loot tables
• Condition damage decay got reduced. Now 70% of condition damage remains for next tick (was only 60% before).

Fixes:

• Fixed bug that caused high tier maps to not spawn any map mods past a specific run progression
• Fixed skilltree node highlight staying active for shard of exchange or shard of renewal when pressing on different skilltree shard.
• Fixed descent defense progress not resetting after all completed defense segments
• Fixed descent increased reward not resetting after all completed defense segments

Fixes:

• Fixed copied legacy progress from old save files
• Clarified shard of renewal skilltree shard description

The Earthshaper content update is here together with the start of season 12 & a 48 h race event. The race event holds special prices for those streaming their full progress. More information on the race at: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1646790/view/3812920173355944610?l=english With the earthshaper content update we are not only adding earth-shaping weapons and trinkets to your arsenal but also reworking the pathfinder system, rebalancing difficulties and game progression as well as adding two new skill tree shards to give you even more possibilities in shaping your skilltree!

New Features:

New Weapons

• Earthshaper [Melee Weapon]: Each melee attack throws a stone boulder in a random direction piercing through all enemies and scaling with your melee damage.
• Woodweaver [Range Weapon]: Your light bird projectiles are swirling around the shooting direction.

New Trinket

• Earthwalker [Defensive Trinket]: Each of your attacks casts a stone boulder in a random direaction piercing through all enemies in that line. Scaling with your melee damage.

New Skilltree Shards

Shard of Exchange

Shard of Renewal

Pathfinder Redesign

Reworked Difficulty Scaling

Major Changes and Improvements

• Skill tree node search now deactivates the highlights when ending search and clicking outside the search box.
• New tooltips for melee attack cost and endurance attack cost in the stats window.
• Tooltips in stats window and skill gems window are now displayed faster and have much much shorter delay. This should prevent new players hovering too fast over tooltips and missing out on the informations in stats window.
• Improved Woodweaver weapon icon.
• Reworked Enter Skill Tree Tutorial.
• Removed confusing Skill Type section on legendary effect tooltips.
• New and Improved Distortion Effects: Distortion effects have been reworked from scratch to fix artifacts and improve overall impact of skill effects.
• Improved fire breath of Serpent gatekeeper for clearer attack hitboxes. Sperpent abilities also got performance improvements.

Balancing

• [Character] Heleja now only has + 1 additional projectile multiplicator from the start (was 2 before) and the additional projectile damage is now +20% (was 50% before).
• [Skill Node] Projectile multiplicator now has an increased additional energy cost of 2 (was 1 before). Projectile multiplicator now also decreases projectile damage by -20%.
• [Skill Node] Increased projectile damage incrases projectile damage by +50% (was +100% before)
• [Condition Damage] Default starting condition damage was reduced to 5 (was 10 before)
• [Skill Node] Increased Condition Damage now increases condition damage by +5 (was +10 before)
• Explosive Potion now deals 1000 damage (was 500 before). Explosive Potion also scales with your melee and projectile damage.
• Twilight Quiver Rework: Twilight Quiver now shoots 3x12 Projectiles instead of only 12 projectiles. Twilight Quiver now also got it's own projectiles.
• All dodge skills now have reduced cost. Dodge skills now only reduce dodge regeneration by -10% was (-20%)
• Condition Damage decay has been reduced by 5% (now 60% of next tick will remain, was 55%)

Fixes

• Fixed minor Memory leaks for some melee skill effects.
• Fixed cyclic might leading to unusable attack patterns for bleeding star and amber melee weapons.
• Increased item drop de-acceleration to make them slide less.
• Removed confusing Skill Type section on legendary effect tooltips
• Fixed not being able to target items near tower in descent defence
• Fixed lost focus on gamepad when accessing the skillgem menu without containing skillgems
• Fixed ravaging companions not having getting grim reaper effect visually appearing
• Decreased tidal crab AoE hitbox size to prevent unfair player hits
• Fixed wrong audio bus for bloodstained chest sound effects
• Fixed wrong audio bus for corrupted merchant boss
• Controller input information is now on stats window and skill gem window is now hidden when now playing with controller
• Fixed missing tag for "Ascend" map mod
• Fixed unlock weapons/skills dialog being removed from unlock npcs in town which had to be re-triggered on activating introduction dialog
• Fixed descent expedition UI scaling on other language settings
• Fixed descent defense ending on scene switch and locking you into the descent when dying in softcore mode
• Fixed blocked progression (0.9.1.0a)

The upcoming "Earthshaper" content update will launch together with the Race Event on 24th November at 7pm CET. Since the next update for Striving for Light is just around the corner we will do a Developer Livestream tomorrow at:

Livestream on: Saturday, 18.11.2023 - 1pm CET on: https://www.twitch.tv/deventide

• Pathfinder rework
• 2 new skilltree shards, Shard of Exchange, Shard of Renewal
• Woodweaver - A new nature themed range weapon
• Earthshaper - A new nature themed melee weapon
• Earthwalkers - A new nature themed trinket
• Plenty of further improvements and optimisations

New Features:

• Reworked save file management system.
• New notification when new seasons are available in main menu.
  
• Joining new seasons is now done by entering the save file manager on top right in main menu. There you will also have an overview of the current season you are currently playing and what new season is available.
  

Improvements:

• Improved dialog system for all NPCs in town. It is now not required to press the contine button in order to unlock further dialog options like unlocking weapons/skills in town. Also unlocking new dialog options for Darokin the old man in Ankerath are now only listed in the dialog list and not automatically triggered, which lets you access gambling and unlocking the character without clicking throuh all the dialogs.
• Redesigned Darokin's Staff projectile
• Improved performance for all shadows
• Improvements to save file loading. If you encountered any weird bug that loaded the wrong safe file just press the top right button in main menu and re-select your offline/online save file again.
• Improvements to projectile shadows
• All melee weapons now have new alternate random sound effect. This marks the end of machine gun sounding dagger attacks with extreme attack speeds
• Aeodra arena has received new parallax background effects and got a redesign

Fixes:

• Fixed wrong dialog caption for Goladir Blacksmith that showed Unlock Character instead of Unlock weapon
• Phoenix egg is now removed when activated and dying in softcore game mode
• Fixed wrong save files being loaded after the race event timer initialisation in main menu
• Fixed wrong save files being loaded after entering the save file manager
• Fixed player getting stuck on city plaza wall collider when walking along the side walls

We are continuosly working on the upcoming patch 0.9.1 and want to share some news about a new skill tree shard that will expand your arsenal of possibilities on reshaping your skilltree.

New Features:

Shard of Exchange

Shard of Renewal

Fixes:

• Fixed duplicated Corrupted Merchant after dying in Softcore
• Fixed Aeodra Arena not being ended after Dying in Softcore
• Fixed additional spawned portals and trees of light in the Aoedra Arena on scene switches
• Fixed a bug that might cause no enemy hit effects to be played after multiple scene transitions
• Fixed missing achievement translation tag

New Features:

• Implemented new system that limits the maximum amount of concurrent enemy hit effects for improved performance

Fixes:

• Fixed a crash related to offline save files and the race countdown system
• Fixed enemies shooting duplicate projectiles
• Fixed clipping cape on character selection screen

The next 48h Race will take place at the 24th-26th November 2023 starting and ending at 7pm CET.

Price Pool

Stream your full race progress on twitch & have VODs active to prevent cheating [/olist]

Special Features:

• All characters, weapons and skills are unlocked from the start for everyone for the race event.
• Race is Hardcore only.
• Race will use the reworked pathfinder system of update 0.9.1.0 which is currently in playtesting. You can start training already by joining the public playtest for SfL and give us balancing feedback.

Not streaming yet?

Set up a twitch account and begin livestreaming or invite your favourite twitch streamer to participate in the event! Download and use this attached invitation card to invite other streamers: Download invitation card here.

[ 2023-11-05 19:30:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

Improvements:

• Improved Sound Effect Mixdown: The recent rewrite of the sound manager lead to sound sources levels not sending the desired volume levels to the manager which resulted in all sfx being played at the same volume. This hotfix brings back the proper sound effect mixdown.

In Update 0.9.0.9 we took a step back and focused on the games visuals with improved lighting, shadows and brand new blood effects. We also optimised our rendering pipeline for performance improvements

New Features

• Blood decals: New blood effects have been added to the game. This should not only improve hit feedback but will add three dimensinal depth to the game.
  
• 3D Projectile Shadows: All projectiles now have 3D shadows that will seperate them better from the background improve the feel of depth.
• Improved enemy shadows: Enemies now have improved shadow effects.
  
• Abandon Run: Added abandon run option to the pause menu which lets you directly end your current run and start a new one. A confirmation window has been added to prevent accidental button clicks.
  
• Improved Performance: Optimised rendering pipeline for performance improvements.

New Features:

• Weapons Stats and tooltips now have frames according to their rarity/stats count

Balancing:

• [Condition Damage] Default starting condition damage was reduced to 5 (was 10 before)

Fixes:

• Sandworm map boss now has larger aggro range to prevent him from blocking pathways before you can aggro him.
• Companions respawn is now triggered after each performed attack to prevent them being lost in the map when they are locked into an attack loop.
• Fixed lost map chest key when leaving game and returning run later on.
• Companion projectiles are now as well affected by player effect transparency setting.

Improvements and Major Changes:

• Smarter Companions: Melee Companions now move away from the target to re-attack and are smarter now.
  
• Switched leave and trade button on the corrupted merchant UI

Balancing:

• Condition damage stack decay per condition tick is now back to 55% which is only slightly less than the initial 67%. The latest change to 30% has been reverted. The maximum condition damage duration is now a maximum of 20s. Hitting during this duration will extend the condition duration by 1s per condition hit.
• A major "bug" in the condition calculation was fixed which made the condition decay to be applied before the first condition tick which made it nearly impossible to wrap the head around how condition damage is calulated. This fixed bug will lead to ~ 45% increased condition damage, to compensate we lowered the condition damage skill nodes to grant +7 additional condition damage (was 10 before). Overall this should be a further buff for to the already strong condition damage. Please give us feedback how this affects your builds and run performance. (v.0.9.0.8e)

Fixes:

• Fixed companions not being teleported to player position when entering descent expedition rooms.
• Fixed NPCs and loot can be target the same time which made it possible to trigger dialog and change items at the same time.
• Fixed seldom bug that made you teleport to the gatekeeper arena when interacting with objects on the map.
• Fixed triggering gatekeeper portal and exchanging a trinkets or weapons at the same time which lead to duplicated items.
• Chickens, buildings and map obstacles now do not distract range constructs and make them shooting more reliable. Range constructs are now also able to aim at the training dummies in town. (v.0.9.0.8e)

Balancing:

• Increased condition damage stacks decay per tick to prevent abnormal high condition damage stacking to -60% (was -30%)

Fixes:

• Fixed additional projectiles and weapon stats not being applied directly on weapon pickup
• Fixed gap lines in ground tiles especially visible on the beach map
• Fixed range constructs enemy targeting issue.
• Fixed bloodstained chest counting defeated enemies wrong
• Fixed very long skill tree connections on skill tree expand

We are currently redesigning the pathfinder map system and want to invite you the chance to playtest the new system before the update 0.9.1 get released. This will give us the chance to gather valuable feedback to get the most out of the new pathfinder system. To access the public playest simply go to the game on steam -> right click preferences -> betas -> select playtest. As this is a public playtest you are allowed to stream and share your experience with the new system. Please share your experience with us here on steam forums or our discord.. We will also jump into livestreams and check out how the progress looks in actual runs to get better insights for balancing the new system. Make sure you only play on the new playtest 0.9.1 online safe file and refrain from using the season 11 safe file. Playtest has its own leaderboards.

New Features:

Pathfinder Redesign

Difficulty Scaling

Improvements:

• Eternal Sands trap is now much smaller and moves much slower.

Fixes:

• Fixed descent defense tower not being healed up when it get defeated
• Decreased tidal crab AoE hitbox size to prevent unfair player hits
• Fixed wrong audio bus for bloodstained chest sound effects
• Fixed wrong audio bus for corrupted merchant boss
• Controller input information is now on stats window and skill gem window is now hidden when now playing with controller
• Fixed missing tag for "Ascend" map mod
• Fixed unlock weapons/skills dialog being removed from unlock npcs in town which had to be re-triggered on activating introduction dialog
• Fixed descent expedition UI scaling on other language settings

Improvements:

• Phoenix fire line AoE attacks have been redesigned
• Void enemies have received redesigned AoE effects
• Cave enemies have received redesigned AoE effects
• Plenty of enemy AoE effects have been redesigned (Izamuth, map bosses, ...)
  
  

Balancing:

• Descent Defense tower upgrades now do not get reset when the tower gets destroyed. This should make the Descent Defense event easier later during your run.

Fixes:

• Fixed stats window re-opening when entering the skilltree if it has been closed with crafing or skill gem button in previous skill tree sessions
• Fixed language setting not being saved and reset on game restart
• Fixed smith and librarian triggering dialog at first interaction that not enough light is available to unlock new weapons/skills, even though you have enough light
• Fixed wrong assigned minimap icon for awakened gatekeeper leaderboard stone in town

Improvements:

• Improved Softcore Mode: When you die on softcore all world events are deactivated to prevent you from re-dying when re-spawning on bloodstained chest border for example or getting you locked into a specific event
• Void trap now has an indicator for the orbit of the trap crystal to make it easier to predict the trap movement
• Implemented further checks if data from our server API's is corrupted or incomplete that would make the game crash when interacting with the leaderboards
• Reduced initial dropped item movement speed out of chests
• Adjusted some map brightness levels

Balancing:

• Trap amount on all map modifiers was reduced to +10% (was +20% before)
• Trap amount scaling on all maps was reduced and maximum amount of possible traps on maps got reduced

Fixes:

• Fixed Guardian Aegis Ability Effect not being hidden directly when the guard shield runs out
• Fixed a bug that caused health points UI being slightly desynced when switching scenes in rare cases

Update 0.9.0.7

New Features:

• Unspent Skillpoint Indicator: A new UI element has been added for indicating your amount of unspent skillpoints.Located at the top left just below the circular EXP indicator it will remind you how much unspent skill points you currently have.
  
• New Sound Effect System: The sound effect system was completely reworked to prevent destroyed and removed audio sources like projectiles to also interrupt the current sound effect playback before it was finished.

Improvements

• Petrified Heart charges are now saved when you exit the game and continue your run later.
• Reduced loading times when entering and exiting the skilltree.
• General improvements to loading routines for reduced loading times and improved performance on scene switches.

Fixes:

• Further fixed Golden Lifecasque messing with your HP and also killing you when you had the ability active an switching scenes. This time for real ...

Improvements:

• Loot is more physically dropping out of chests
• Trinket active abilities now stay active when you switch scenes and continue when also entering a new map or environment. This should make all trinkets with longer durations more useful.
• Further Improved Skilltree Algorithm: Further improved the balancing of node variety when a lot of skills have been unlocked. Also fixing a unwanted side effect of yesterday's patch, which caused some skill nodes to spawn more frequent as intended.

Balancing:

• Golden Lifecasque: Fortify cooldown was reduced to 25 enemies (was 30 enemies)
• Guardian Aegis: Guard ability duration was increased to 10 seconds (was 6 seconds) also cooldown was reduced to 25 enemies (was 30 enemies)

Fixes:

• Fixed Golden Lifecasque messing with your HP and also killing you when you had the ability active an switching scenes. (v.0.9.0.6a)
• Fixed crash when applying shard of power on emerald staff. (v.0.9.0.6b)
• Fixed trinket being hidden behind chests
• Fixed missing descent expedition device map icon

Update 0.9.0.6

New Features:

• New Legendary Trinket - Golden Lifecasque: Granting you life, melee, projectile damage, and movement speed. Also granting the active ability Fortify, which temporarily grants you 8 max life and 8 health that will vanish after the effect duration.
  
  
• Improved Skill Tree Algorithm: As you unlock more skills, the likelihood of base skill nodes appearing in the skill tree increases, ensuring a balanced range of possibilities. We've implemented a new weighting system that boosts the spawn chances of rare essential nodes as your skill count grows. This enhancement means you're now more likely to encounter skill nodes for things like condition damage, companion damage, or increased melee/projectile damage within the skill tree (with a lot of skill unlocks).
• Reworked Awakened Gatekeeper System: Map tiers now increase the chance of spawning an Awakened Gatekeeper on the current map. The higher the map tier, the higher the chance you will encounter these new and challenging uber boss versions. The Awakened Gatekeeper Chance is now directly indicated on the map tooltips.
  
• Streamlined Pathfinder Experience: If you now activate a map in the pathfinder, the radial menu automatically closes, and a new bigger "enter the map" button will appear at the bottom of the screen, which should make the whole pathfinder system much easier to understand. You can now go back to the portal by pressing the "B" button on the controller or "ESC" button on the keyboard.
  

Improvements:

• Descent Expedition Device now only shows a rift instead of the full device on the minimap once the event was completed.
• Original OST is now the default option for the first launch for new players. This was unintended, and the soundtrack option is now set to the default original OST for all players.
• Improved trinket indicator visuals for active ability duration UI.
• Updated skill textures for bleeding blade skill nodes and meteor skill nodes.
• Improved meteor visuals.
• The game now defaults to the highest zoomed-out camera setting (was a bit zoomed in before).

Balancing:

• Descent Expedition enemy spawns have been drastically reduced. The enemy spawn amount now also does not scale with the overall map depth but only with the descent expedition level upgrade chosen by skygems.
• Bloodstained Chest events now grant experience for each enemy that was defeated in the circles. This XP also scales with your map XP modifiers.
• The most lethal descent expedition traps have been decreased in size or received changed animation speed to make them easier.
• Swift Amulet - Defensive Trinket: Now additionally grants 15% movement speed.
• Guardian Aegis - Legendary Trinket: Ability now requires 1 offensive, 1 defensive, 1 utility trinket (was 3 defensive trinket requirement).
• Heartwood Bulwark - Defensive Trinket: Now grants 2 additional max life (was 1 max life before).
• Elixir - Legendary Trinket: Ability now requires 1 offensive, 1 defensive, 1 utility trinket (was 3 defensive trinket requirement). Elixir now always grants 1 max life and 5% movement speed.

Fixes:

• Fixed placed skill gems having inactive connections to other surrounding skills.
• Second and enemy tags are now also added to trinket stats UI when picking them up in maps.
• Fixed overlapping tutorial on ground of first map.
• Fixed bug with highlighted enemy projectile setting not being saved.
• Fixed descent defense tower being able to survive on negative HP

New Features:

• Highlighted Enemy Projectiles: A new highlighted enemy projectile option is enabled by default for all players that adds a red outline to all enemy projectiles further improving projectile visibility. This option can also be toggled off in the gameplay options menu.

Improvements:

• Softcore mode is now the default selected mode for new players on the first launch (was hardcore before)
• Bloodstained chest border does not deal damage 3 seconds after re-entering the run on softcore mode after dying
• Some gatekeeper projectiles are now brighter and more red tinted for improvedvisibility

Fixes:

• Updated softcore/ hardcore tooltips
• Fixed wrong teleport related to descent event maps when re-entering the run after death in softcore mode

Improvements:

• Increased the brightness and line thickness of skill gem placement connection previews

Fixed:

• Fixed skill shards icon when assigning them to skill nodes not following mouse
• Fixed stats window preventing skill tree UI buttons to be clicked
• Fixed activating zoom when toggling through tooltips in stats window with controller

New Features:

• New Skillgem Placement System: The skillgem placement system as well as the placement preview was completely reworked. If you now want to place a skillgem you will see exactly where the skillgem will be placed and also which connections will be forged to your existing skills. This removes the randomness and makes skill gem placement a 100% accurate and predictable experience.
  
• New Tooltips for Stats: For all important stats new tooltips have been added to explain what each stat does. This should ease diving into the game for new players.
  
• New Options Menu: The options menu has been completely redesigned and is now structured in tabs which makes it much easier to find the options you are searching for. The keybindings menu was now also integrated in to the options menu and does not have to be opened by an additional scene switch. The additional space on each option tab was used to display your current screen resolution or display what soundtrack is currently selected. No more double-applying from drop down menus to ensure the right option was selected.
  
• Improved Descent Loot: Map shards have been removed from the Descent loot pool to increase the drop chances for more valuable loot. Skill point gems now have been added to the Descent loot pool as well.

Balancing:

• Tower projectile speed upgrades now increase tower attack speed by 25% (was 20%)
• Tower melee hammer attacks got reduced cooldown to 8s (was 10s) and upgrades now increase attack speed by 20% (was 10%)
• From all descent event chests for expedition and defense all map shards got removed from the drop pool in order to increase the chances of rarer loot being dropped. Also skill point gems have been added to the descent chest drop pool.

Fixes:

• Fixed a bug that caused cutting shot to not stack when multiple nodes were taken. This might have caused other projectile on hit skills to not stack correctly.
• Fixed a crash when tabbing trough tooltips in the stats window when using a controller

Misc:

• Updated game icon.

New Feature:

• Awakened Gatekeeper now have softcore achievements.
• The Awakened Gatekeeper Leaderboard got Softcore implementation. Now your progress in defeating all awakened gatekeepers on softcore as well as the time you completed this achievement in the season is tracked by the Awakened Gatekeeper Leaderboard in town.
• Sorting of Achievements: There are now 3 tabs in the achievement menu which allows you to sort between locked, unlocked and all achievements.
• Improved controller support on leaderboard UI: You can now use the LT/RT buttons to switch between HC/SC in the leaderboard.

Fixes:

• You can now use the node navigation on the controller when the stats window is open.

New Features:

• Cycle through Loot: You can now cycle through multiple dropped trinkets and weapons if they have dropped nearly next to each other by pressing down d-pad button on controller
• Improved Loot Physics: Weapons and Trinkets now behave more physical featuring de-acceleration when dropped, what makes them less likely to lay on top of each other. This should also make it easier to see what items you have dropped from chests

Improvements:

• Improved loot drop positioning for the gambling at Darokin. Also reduced dialog collider of Darokin to make it easier to pick up items around Darokin without triggering his dialog.

Fixes:

• Fixed city plaza wrong collider placement
• Trinket stats UI is now as well directly closed when exchange trinket UI is closed
• Fixed massive shadow on ice bird enemies

New Features:

More Accessible Softcore Mode

Shockwave Culling System

Improvements:

• Companions are now teleported to your current player position whenever you enter a gatekeeper arena, descent expedition room or world event with barriers.
• Companions on respawning when getting out of reach do not perfectly stack on each other keeping better overview on the amount of companions you have
• Improved player level up visual effect
• Redesigned Light Staff and Phoenix Staff Projectile visuals
• Improved Descent Expedition background visuals
• Improved bleeding blade visuals

Balancing:

• Tower Defense Upgrades: Blade Orbit now does not knockback enemies (did knockback)
• Tower Defense Upgrade: Each Blade Orbit upgrade now increases the chance to spawn an additional blade orbit (was a guaranteed spawn increase before)

Fixes:

• Fixed wrong wording on descent defense event start button
• Paused game on tower defense while selecting upgrades now does not trigger further tower abilities on pause and release all of them when continuing
• Fixed reset serpents phase spawn on softcore when you have died and re-entering the gatekeeper arena
• Fixed glaring light total duration of only 1s (should be 3s) (v.0.9.0.1a)
• Fixed vanishing trinkets that have been exchanged and dropped again (v.0.9.0.1a)

New Features:

• Quality of Life for Trinkets: On trinket exchange now automatically the next empty slot is focused. If all slots are taken the first trinket slot is focused as usual

Improvements:

• Improved Trinket Tooltips: Trinket ability duration now has the suffix "s" to indicate that the trinket ability duration is measured in seconds
• Improved Trinket Tooltips: Trinket ability cooldown has the suffix "enemies" to indicate that the ability cooldown is depending on defeated enemies
• Improved player level up visual effect (rolled back)
• Performance improvements for chicken companions (vfx rework)
• Performance improvements to range companions (vfx rework)
• Increased brightness on forest map

Fixes:

• Fixed crash when exiting rescue darokin world event

Fixes:

• Stats window now resumes if it was kept open on closing the skill tree
• Fixed a crash when loading offline save files
• Fixed ancient tree root attack layering
• Inverted the functionality of the transparency sliders in the options menu as they actually have controlled the opacity.

[previewyoutube=Deku9Kd1QQQ;full][/previewyoutube] After many months of hard work we are hyped to release the long anticipated "Descent" content update! In this post we will go over all the new features, improvements, balancing changes and fixes that version 0.9 will bring to you.

Awakened Gatekeeper Event

Patch notes

New Features:

• Descent Defense: A new tower defense like game mode with new run specific currency.
• Descent Expedition Dungeons: Upgradable dungeons utilizing the new currency.
• New Trinket System: 31 unique trinkets added to the game featuring legendary trinkets and new active abilities (shapeshifting, healing, attacks, skills, stats).
• Active Abilities System: Next to your main attacks you can now find trinkets that grant a second ability that you can trigger on "Q" by default (can be changed in options) and "RB" on controller.
• New Attack and Ability UI: We added a new attack and ability UI for more responsive combat
• Maps and Enemies: 2 new maps: Beach & Courtyard featuring 6 new enemies, 6 new map bosses and 2 new gatekeepers to fight.
• Gatekeeper Weapons: 2 new gatekeeper weapons have been added, featuring a melee weapon that triggers projectiles and a ranged weapon that enables mine throw play styles.
• Bloodstained Chest: Engage in this new mysterious world event.
• Rewoked Tree Of Light: The legacy skill tree got a complete rework and new kind of skill nodes have been added to the legacy tree (like companion/projectile/melee/condition/crit damage node) for even more specialised runs.
• City Plaza: The city has been redesigned and a new plaza was added to the city where you can now find the leaderboards in online mode.
• Awakened Leaderboards : There is now a new leaderboard tracking your progress and the time and date when you have defeated all 11 awakened gatekeepers in the current season.
• Enemy Designs: All "old" enemies have been completely redesigned (6 enemies in total and 1 new enemy and map boss added to older maps).
• Gatekeeper Arena: A new battleground awaits.
• Awakened Gatekeepers: Fearsome foes that spawn at map tier 6 and beyond. There are band new achievements for defeating those Awakened Gatekeepers.
• New Soundtracks: 5 new tracks with over 18 minutes of playtime. Prepare for some of the darkest sounds Striving for Light has seen so far. This takes our SfL OST to a total playtime +77 min
• Softcore Mode: Softcore mode now grants 1 more shield and features the same leveling experience as the hardcore mode.
• New Visual Effects: A big portion of older visual effects got a complete rework and got optimised for improved performance.

Major changes and improvements:

• Player Movement Speed: The base player movementspeed got increased.
• Player Skills: Numerous abilities have been redesigned with fresh visuals.
• Blazing Dodge: It's not just a dodge with a burning dot anymore - leave a burning trail in your wake!
• Accurate Enemy Spawns: Enemy spawn algorithm got a complete rework. All enemy spawns are now indicated by a red dot and do not spawn upon your current player position.
• Enemy Attacks: Redesigned to offer a fresh challenge.
• Map Unlocking System: A map unlocking device was implemented that you can find on maps to unlock new environments.
• Extended Map Modifiers: A new map modifier has been added that increases elite enemy spawn rate and increases trinket drop rates
• Crafting UI: The crafting UI got a redesign
• Map Redesigns: Old maps have been given a visual overhaul.
• Performance: Game runs smoother with our latest improvements.
• Map Lighting: Map lighting got a complete rework granting more vibrant colors and removes this feel of a dark vail covereing the screen
• Old Content Updated: Plenty of tweaks and improvements to older content for a fresh feel.
• Improved Hitboxes: Plenty of enemies have received improved hitboxes. No more invisible hits from corrupted merchant or devourer.
• Improved Controller Support: Stats window got improved controller support to be ableto view tooltips on weapons, character and the new trinkets. Improved controller support for the skill tree and skill tree UI navigation.
• More world Event Variation: World event spawnrates got adjusted to not overload maps with events. Now there are more different events on maps for more variety.
• Consitent Arena Music: The music in the aeodra arena is now continuously playing and not jumping to the action loop on each wave start.
• Consistent Naming: Remove items at darokin in town for gambling has been renamed to "convert items" as it now also converts left over trinkets and weapons to light fragments

Balancing changes:

• Phoenix world event now has a lower skill shard drop rate (was 100% before)
• Elite enemies now only have a chance in dropping additional huge light fragments containing a light fragment and additional exp (was 100% before)
• Life leech got buffed to 1HP/120 defeated enemies on the first node taken (was 1HP/150 before)
• Plenty of enemies got improved and changed attack patterns
• Softcore mode now has the same required exp scaling as hardcore mode

Fixes:

• Fixed some crashes on some weapon skill combinations
• Fixed controller issues in the skilltree
• Fixed not being able to go back to map from the gatekeeper arena
• Fixed some missplaced enemy hitboxes and colliders
• Fixed and cleaned up old art that had some artifacts on borders creating weird red lines floating around enemies when highlighted enemy option was enabled
• Fixed various cases where using a portal has removed the collected map chest key

[previewyoutube=Deku9Kd1QQQ;full][/previewyoutube] We are back with the final post before the launch of the Descent Content Update. On our latest two descent content update previews we promised there will be even more content included into this update so we will share the full set of content coming with patch 0.9 to Striving for Light. In case you missed our last two previews for the descent content update you can read them here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1646790/view/3694694975390397377 https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1646790/view/3754369573818192135

Descent Release Date

Awakened Gatekeeper Event

Full content overview

New Features:

• Descent Defense: A new tower defense like game mode with new run specific currency.
• Descent Expedition Dungeons: Upgradable dungeons utilizing the new currency.
• New Trinket System: Over 30 unique trinkets added to the game featuring new active abilities (shapeshifting, healing, attacks, skills, stats).
• New Attack and Ability UI: We added a new attack and ability UI for more responsive combat
• Maps and Enemies: 2 new maps: Beach & Courtyard featuring 6 new enemies, 6 new map bosses and 2 new gatekeepers to fight.
• Gatekeeper Weapons: 2 new additions for your arsenal.
• Bloodstained Chest: Engage in this new mysterious world event.
• Enemy Designs: All "old" enemies have been completely redesigned (6 enemies in total and 1 new enemy and map boss added to older maps).
• Gatekeeper Arena: A new battleground awaits.
• Awakened Gatekeepers: Fearsome foes that spawn at map tier 6 and beyond.
• New Soundtracks: 5 new tracks with over 18 minutes of playtime. Prepare for some of the darkest sounds Striving for Light has seen so far.
• Softcore Mode: A complete rework to enhance the experience.

Major changes and improvements:

• Player Skills: Numerous abilities have been redesigned with fresh visuals.
• Blazing Dodge: It's not just a dodge with a burning dot anymore - leave a burning trail in your wake!
• Enemy Attacks: Redesigned to offer a fresh challenge.
• Map Redesigns: Old maps have been given a visual overhaul.
• Performance: Game runs smoother with our latest improvements.
• Old Content Updated: Plenty of tweaks and improvements to older content for a fresh feel.

Updated Pricing

We are sure the latest update preview for the upcoming "Descent" content update has left you wondering how active abilities will work, how the trinkets look in game, how you will equip them, if we are really adding shapeshifting abilities to Striving for Light and what are those descent dungeons and the world event? We hope that this update preview will quench your thirst and give you some insights on what will await you with the upcoming update. Since all major features of the 1.0 release will be implemented with the 0.9 content update we are updating our pricing with the release of Descent content update. In case you missed the first descent update preview you can read it here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1646790/view/3694694975390397377?l=english

Shapeshifting

Using Trinkets

Active Ability System

Trinkets Abilities

Descent Dungeons

Bloodstained Chests

Improvements and old content rework

• You might have noticed the completely new blood visual effects
• More responsive range combat
• Improved enemy spawn algorithm that prevents enemy spawns upon player position
• Rebuilding some left over old particle effects to utilise GPU calculated particles to prevent CPU bottlenecks.
• Gatekeeper arena re-design
• Plenty of performance improvements to enable you to further push the bounds with your created builds.
• Improved scaling of softcore mode
• Improved controller support for skilltree UI navigation
• Updated skill effects for older skills like explosions, meteors ...

Updated Pricing

What comes next?

We are proud to announce the name and theme of the upcoming 0.9 content update. Update 0.9 will be the biggest content update Striving for Light has ever seen! "Descent" With the upcoming content update traces of a new ore have been found in the vast lands around Ankerath. The ore was a shimmering hue of blue, as deep and mesmerizing as the sky. News of the discovery spread like wildfire. It's told that some light fragments formed the ore when colliding at the great scatter.
The lands are transforming. Where once there were meadows and forests, now wooden scaffolds shadowed the ground. The clang of hammers and pickaxes became a constant echo as mine shafts, like scars, began to appear, burrowing deep into the belly of the earth, driven by the insatiable hunger for the new ore. No one thought we would awaken these ancient dormant terrors...
In Descent you will find frequent tunnels that lead into the belly of the earth. Construct mine shafts and install defense upgrades to defend yourself and your mine shaft from the awakened horrors to descent and digg for skygems.
Prolong and intensify your descent to maximise the risk and reward of your expedition into the deep!

New Trinket System

Legendary Trinkets

Normal Trinkets

What comes next?

Improvements

• Performance improvements for all constructs
• Additional projectiles from weapon stats do now update the range attack immediately (was updating after next skill tree scene switch)

Bugfixes:

• Fixed a memory leak when using range constructs
• Fixed skill tree node search camera pan after searching for nodes that contained letters "wasd"
• Fixed a crash on player death (v.0.8.7.2c)
• Fixed a crash due to new improved scene loading (v.0.8.7.2.c)

Update 0.8.7.2a is making getting hit more fun than ever... with complete new player hit visuals and sound effects.

Improvements

• Player hit visual effects have been completly reworked. Player hit has also got a brand new sound effect. This will make player hits feel much more responsive and impactful. And last but not least they should make getting hit more fun than ever :). And this is how it looks in action.
  
• Reworked trembling ground visuals effects and fixed inconsitent visual effect drop outs

Balancing

• Fragmentation projectiles now have increased range and less travel speed

Bugfixes

• Fixed crahses that have been introduced by the latest loading rewrite to reduce scene transition loading times
• Fixed wrong number of assigned enemy on death effects

Improved Controller Support

Improvements

• Highlighted nodes in the skill tree and the pathfinder now have an animated highlight for improved visibility when using a controller.
• Darkness skill gem world event reward window now also on keyboard / mouse focuses first option so that selection can be made by UI arrow navigation
• Further performance improvements on critical hit enemy flash effect
• Fissure skill is now fully affected by the player effect transparency setting
• Improved distort shader effect for the fissure skill effect.
• Reduced loading times when switching scenes.
• Player character is now remaining facing in the latest walking direction instead of always facing in the downwards direction.

Bugfixes

• Fixed map tooltip offset to the right when activating a map or deactivating a map
• Fixed misplaced tooltips on the pathfinder radial menu when using a controller.

Just yesturday we have released a big update for Striving for Light and we are going full force ahead! This update 0.8.7.1 is full packed with performance improvements to make exploring the new added weapon as well as the new weapon effect / construct interactions more fun than ever! This update also fixes the portal not detecting the player after scene switch which made you require to leave and return to a pathfinder portal in order to activate it!

Improvements

• Massive performance improvements for all enemy hit flash effects that have multiple body parts like worms/centipedes. Previously long worm enemies like worm map boss or the bleak worm gatekeeper endboss could lead to massive frame drops when attacking with a huge amount of frequent hits. The enemy flash effect was rewritten for maximum performance at exact same functionality.
• Massive performance improvements for all companion enemy hit effects. Previously all companions triggered additional enem hit visual effects that where not intended. This could lead to massive frame drops when a big bunch of companions attacked an enemy with much HP like bosses.

Bugfixes

• The pathfinder portal now detects the player directly after scene switch and does not require you to leave the portal area and return to activate the portal and use it.

With update 0.8.7 we are added a new weapon designed in cooperation with latest streamer race winner Sin. We are also adding a slider to adjust the minimap overlay transparency. We are reworking how weapon effect triggers work in combination with constructs and more.

New Features:

New Melee Weapon - Frozen Vessel

Minimap Overlay Transparency

Improved Weapon Effect Triggers

Improvements:

• Improved melee attack targeting. Melee attacks are now remaining in the started attack angle also when switching walking directions. This should especially be noticeable when using stabbing weapons like a spear.
• Improved boomerang weapon animations and prevented attack direction switch when attack was not yet finished.
• Softcore Mode required exp for level ups has been further reduced.

Balancing Changes:

• Freeze condition now freezes enemies for 2 seconds (was 1 second)

Bugfixes

• Fixed player spawning outside of the gatekeeper arena. Player is now moved inside the area when this occurs.
• Fixed crash due to issues loading sound file.
• Fixed missing description on charge skill node tooltips.
• Fixed layering of swamp and mountain trap damage fields to prevent them being invisible/ covered by other map elements.
• Fixed potential crash on flail weapon with boomerang attack replacer due to wrong animation paths.
• Fixed crash on new secret due to wrong sfx path.

Improvements:

• If your you have gained additional max health on the tree of light legacy progression you will now start your run with full hp as well and not just empty additional max hp.

Bugfixes:

• Fixed a bug that caused world events to remain active on a new run
• Fixed a bug that caused players to be ported into previously visited secret dungeons on a fresh run start.
• In general world reset bugs have been fixed which where introduced by the recent added softcore mode.

Improvements

• Reduced loading times for save files. Players who have plenty of save games already will notice a speed up in loading save game manager and loading the save files.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug that could cause map modifiers of other same named maps to be copied to your current map. This lead to unexpected situations receiving more damage than the map mods of your current map showed. This issue was introduced by recenet memory leak fixes and a rewrite of the code base but this is fixed now.

We have paid attention to the run performances for the new added softcore mode. We designed the softcore mode to feel more relaxed and less risky than the hardcore mode with a bit less exp gain (higher exp requirements for level ups) compared to the hardcore mode to compensate the additional shields you will have for your runs. It turned out that the increased exp requirements for the next level ups are way to high and lead to a very slow and tedious leveling experience past level 25. Therefore we have lowered the exp requirements to only slightly sit above the requirements for the hardcore mode.

Improvements

• Improved attack of centipede enemies.

Improvements

• The recently added secret has been improved and the spawn mechanics have been changed since it was not yet discovered.

Bounty Hunt

This patch notes will be updated whenever the beta branch will receive an update until its feature complete for the upcoming version 0.8.6.

Patch notes v. 0.8.6.0a

• Transitioned to multi threaded physics model for increased performance. Plenty of technical changes on how collisions are processed to enable multi threaded physics.
• Performance improvements on hitting enemies due to new and improved enemy detection range change for all enemies.
• Fixed inconsistent map enemy density which could lead to very poor performance on very unplayable enemy densities on forest and sands map for example. Previously some maps due to weak enemy spawn restrictions could end up having tons over overlapping enemies that was leading to massive performance issues. This should now be fixed as enemies have now the same spawn restrictions on each map.
• Sand map now has larger trap distance to prevent trap cluttering.
• Memory leak fixes.
• Fixed invisible AoE field on corrupted merchant.
• Fixed off-flowing tooltips in the pathfinder when applying shards to maps.
• Increased spawn possibility of the new added secret.

Bounty Hunt the new Secret

Bug Reporting

Improvements:

• Rearranged the dialog box options so that all dialog boxes have confirm action to the right and leave or cancel actions on the left. The phoenix, merchant, coop stone, chicken dialog boxes there have been update with new option arrangement.
• Stone statue enemy eyes now as well have a red outline
• Fixed inconsistent worm enemy attack collider activation

Bugfixes

• Fixed crit damage value not being displayed in the stats window
• Fixed cape glitch of unknown wanderers (v.0.8.5.3a)
• Fixed wrong translation tag in game difficulty icon (v.0.8.5.3b)

New Features:

Improvements:

• Smoother player camera movement and performance improvements.
• Improved positioning of player collider on rogue, heleja, dark wanderer and farmer.
• Treasure event enemies now have bigger player detect radius.

Balancing:

• Darkness Staff now has 5 base damage (was 10 base damage).

Bugfixes

• Reverted to serial physics model due to some regressions.

Improvements

• Fixed memory leaks on scene switch which lead to degraded performance over time.
• Glaring light has reduced visual stack count to prevent visual blow out
• Darkness Challenges for receiving skill gems now do not spawn enemies on current player position
• Fixed wrong displayed shadow on phoenix superboss
• Fixed stats display fraction of values decimal values
• Stone Statue enemies now as well have red outline for hands
• Loading screen now has translations

Balancing

• Worm enemies now do not deal damage on tail edge

Bugfixes:

• Fixed world event glitch that makes it possible to activate an event multiple times
• Rolled back previous change that always difficulty tier 1 is automatically selected. Now always the highest current difficulty tier is selected by default on the start of a run
• Fixed increased projectile damage skill nodes not affecting the projectile damage (v.0.8.5.1b)

New Features:

• New training dummies have been added to Ankerath.
  This training dummies always have the same HP Pool as regular enemies of your current difficulty setting. So the HP pool dynamically grows with your enemy strength making it the perfect dummy to test build changes before going back into a map. Once a training dummy HP pool is depleated it will immediatly get refilled.
  
• Re-designed damage numbers. We completely redesigned the damage number animation to make damage numbers feel as responsive as possible and more satisfying to look at. So the new animation is designed to reflect the damage inpact. Also the damage numbers have got a complete new color code with gradual tint shift from pure white - yellow - golden depending on the damage amount. The previous color code was just to diverse with a more rainbow disco feel.
  
• Re-designed tooltips for skills, maps, map mods, shards and consumable items. The previous tooltip design can be dated back to our pre-early access days over a year ago so it definately needed a long awaited redesign. Here is how the new tooltip design looks like.
  
  
  

Improvements

• New multi threaded physics model for improved performance
• If new difficulty tiers are unlocked a new run now always defaults at difficulty tier 1 and has to be increased by the player

Bugfixes:

• Fixed the cursor hotspot offset for the software cursor
• Fixed crashes for new players that did not have any savefiles
• Fixed crash/ missing placement preview on placing skill gems with new multi threaded physics model (v.0.8.5.0a)

New Features:

• New maps can now be unlocked in one run by pushing deeper delve levels. Previously you had to do a few runs to unlock all maps
• Rewritten object pooling system that will prevent memory leaks from happening. Previously playing the game for 7+ hours straight has lead to some degraded performance due to accumulating unused game objects from the pooling system. Gameobjects are now reused more efficiently to prevent memory leaks and keep performance stable for very long gaming sessions. But we encurage everyone to take regular breaks, stand up, refill water bottles to stay hydrated, and take care of your self!

Streamer Race

Improvements:

• Improved damage number coloring
• Overall performance improvements and improved performance after scene switches
• Software cursor is now active by default, if you got hidden cursor issues you can still dectivate the software cursor in the options menu

Balancing:

• Darokins Staff: Projectiles now have 40% chance to unleash a light ray upon hit enemies. (was 25% trigger chance)

Bugfixes:

Since our new in-game race event system has now been throughly tested in several race-event iterations we are now happy to announce our very first streamer-race with the new in-game event system.

The 24h Streamer-Race will take place at the 24th-25th June 2023 starting and ending at 7pm CEST.

Price Pool

PayPal for receiving price money (price pool provided by event host QuietForMe) [/olist]

Balancing changes

• All characters, weapons and skills are unlocked from the start for everyone for the streamer race event
• The increased Fragments of light drop rates have been lowered for the streamer race event

Not streaming yet?

Set up a twitch account and begin livestreaming or invite your favourite twitch streamer to participate in the event! Download and use this attached invitation card to invite other streamers: Download invitation card here.

[ 2023-06-12 18:32:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

New features:

• Software cursor is now a opt-in option in the options menu. As plenty of players reported back that windows hides the software cursor for some specific resolutions and screen scaling settings in fullscreen mode the software cursor is now disabled by default. This should always yield a visible cursor with the option to activate the nicer looking software cursor if your windows settings support this.

3 Days Character Race Event

• 3 day event duration, giving all players a more time to compete and try out the still pretty new timed event system.
• All characters are unlocked from the start of the event
• Only tier 1 difficulty tier is available for the rush events

Improvements

• Range constructs now more accurately attack near enemies. Fixed a bug that caused range constructs to often times miss enemies. (v. 0.8.3.2b)
• Reduced glaring light sfx sound volume (v. 0.8.3.2b)
• On rush events only difficulty tier 1 can be played and no further tiers can be unlocked
• Rush events now grant you access to all playable characters right from the start of the event
• Visual improvements for the event system
• Tweaks and improvements for the event system

Balancing:

• Character Heleja now does not get additional energy regeneration as starting stat (was +0.5 energy/second) (v. 0.8.3.2b)
• Character Heleja now does not gain additional AoE size as starting stat (was +20%) (v. 0.8.3.2b)

Bugfixes:

• Fixed a bug that could lead to a crash when entering skill tree
• Fixed wrong rounded resource regeneration values in the leaderboard build viewer
• Fixed resposiveness number overlay for healthbar that activates after exceeding a certain health treshold
• Fixed Bear Caller always having active weapon swing effect when switching to this weapon (v. 0.8.3.2b)

Improvements:

• Build Viewer now displays energy/reg, endurance/reg and dodge/reg for builds on the leaderboards.
• Offscreen spawned particle effects are now culled after the total duration to not fire them up when moving to that offscreen area at a later time. This should improve performance on endgame scenarios.

Bugfixes:

• Fixed 90 offset in triggered attack effects when using the gamepad thumb stick to aim your attacks

Improvements:

• All companions now spawn scattered around the spawn position to prevent them being perfectly stacked on top of each other which made it hard to see how much companions have been created.

• Fixed alt-f4-ing to save death characters

Bugfixes:

• Fixed 2 second iteration in the main menu countdown (this was only a UI display bug, it does not affect the event time synchronisation)
• Farmer and Dark Wanderer Challenge Spawner Eggs can now be targeted by your companions
• Fixed a bug that switched from the offline save file to an "phantom save file" that required to reselect the offline save file in the save manager to continue playing this save file. If you got this bug simply go to the save file manager in the main menu (top right button) and re-select the offline save file. You should now be good to go.
• Fixed a crash on offline save files
• Fixed Rush-Event timer being displayed on offline save files

Join the first 24h Rush-Event. The very first Rush-Event will be on this Friday starting at 7am CET/ 2pm CEST at 28.04.2023 with a duration of 24h. Everyone is invited to try out this new event system and give us valuable feedback on how to improve this system. On Rush-Events all players start with equal conditions on a fresh save file but gain a +100% light fragment drop rate from enemies and world objects.
How Rush-Events work Whenever there is a planed Rush-Event it will show up in the main menu of the game with a countdown until the eventstart. Rush-Events are synced for all players around to world to our server time. Once the coutdown runs out you will be able to register and log into the event. It's important to note that Rush-Events will coexist next to our seasons and the offline save files. You can at any time switch between the Rush-Event, the current season or the offline save file from the save file manager on the top right in the main menu. During the event When you start playing the RushEvent you will notice a new timer on the right of the screen below your minimap. This timer always displays the remaining time within the Rush-Event. When this timer hits the last 10 minutes an additional highlight a sound effect and information is displayed to remind players to get to town on time or get defeated before the time runs out so that the score is updated. We wish everyone a lot of fun with this new Event Type! You are looking for fellow players to talk/ share your build ideas or discuss strategies feel free to join our official discord at: https://discord.com/invite/GNEBkQDyUb

For the Rush-Event all Light Fragment drop rates from enemies and destroyable world objects are doubled! Improvements:

• Life Leech tooltip has now information on how the life leech effect scales on multiple life leech nodes

• Changes to life leech skill nodes. Life leech now has a base leech of 1 health of 150 defeated enemies (was 170) also the leech amount now reduces by -20% for each additional stacked life leech node (was -20 finite value).

• Fixed a crash when loading offline save files (v.0.8.3.0f)
• Fixed not spawned companions
• Some tweaks to controller support
• Fixed legendary effects not being applied directly without scene switch
• Tweaks for Rush Event

Update 0.8.3.0 brings a new Rush-Event-System to Striving for Light, adds a loading screen which displays loading progress of the next scene, makes leaderboards available from the main menu, as well as further improvements and a fix for the crash on game start that could occur when no internet connection was available or API calls have failed.

New Features:

Rush-Event System

Leaderboard in Main Menu

Ranking on Game Over Screen

New Loading Screen

Improvements

• Darokin now grants one light fragment for each removed weapon in town (was 1 light fragment for each 3 weapons)

Bugfixes

• Fixed crashes on startup due to failed requests in receiving data from our APIs
• Fixed controller navigation in skilltree/pathfinder for PS4 controllers (v.0.8.3.0b)

New Features:

Update 0.8.2.5 focuses on balancing and improvements for the skill lightning strike. Also negative tradeoffs from life-leech and collect range have been removed.

Balancing

• Projectile Shield now grants additional 50% projectile range
• Lightning Strike now targets aimed direction
• Life Leech now has no tradeoffs (had +1 Dodge Cost before)
• Increaesd Collecting Range now has no tradeoffs (had +1 Dodge Cost before)
• Darokin glaring light effect now is triggered on melee and range attacks (was only melee attacks)
• Dark Wanderer gained additional 5 companion damage

Bugfixes

• Fixed wrong lifeleech display in build viewer
• Fixed darokin offering the unlock character dialog even though you have already unlocked the character darokin

Bugfixes:

• Changed display settings queue order to prevent crashes on startup.

Thix update focuses on fixing frequent occurring crashes as well as some further bugs. Some further improvements have been added as well. If you encounter any crash please report them to us so that we can fix them as soon as possible. If possible please also attach your settings and save files using the bugreport button in main menu or on our website at www.strivingforlight.com/bugreport

Improvements

• If emerald staff is equiped no projectiles are displayed in the stats window to indicate that you don't have any projectiles when emerald staff is equipped
• New save files now initially don't have any skill tree shards to not overwealm new players with the initial tutorials

Balancing

• Glaring light damage scales with your projectile damage.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a crash when entering a map and keybindings have been changed in a way that one action is not set to a key
• Fixed a crash when trying to freeze chicken enemies
• Glaring light effect can now be displayed multiple times to prevent hidden visual effect on fast attack speed or multiple glaring light stacks
• Fixed heleja carrying weapon offset
• Tooltips for each stat in the stats window has been fixed so that you can now get more information on the different stats.

This update fixes some of the most frequent crashes. If you encounter any crash please report them to us so that we can fix them as soon as possible. If possible please also attach yous settings and save files using the bugreport button in main menu or on our website at www.strivingforlight.com/bugreports.

Improvements:

• Crab enemies and stone golem enemies now have red hitbox indicators
• Added Dodge + Move hint in the tutorials to make it clear that dodge needs a move direction.
• Performance improvements for enemy hit and enemy critical hit visual effects
• Game now starts with windowed initialisation to prevent startup crashes on multi monitor setups (if you still have issues please send us your reports and describe your setup and attach your save and settings files)

Bugfixes:

• Fixed a crash that occurred when picking up a weapon with +1 max health as weapon stat
• Fixed a bug that could lead to a crash when defeating an boss enemy and collecting a key
• Game now default uses original Striving for Light soundtrack instead of the Survival soundtrack on initial game start
• Bursting skills now display correct damage numbers
• Fixed damage numbers decimal values
• Fixed locked initial characters in demo version on first run

With this update we are focusing the sound effects of Striving for Light.

New Features:

Random Alternate Sound Effect Trigger System

Brand New Sound Effects

Improvements

• Performance improvements for all projectiles

Bugfixes

• Fixed a crash on older save files which did not have a character selected from the new character selection on an active run (v 0.8.2.4a)
• Fixed a crash on character death on old save files without selected character from the new character selection (v 0.8.2.4b)
• Fixed weird centipede movement where the enemy could end up accelerating and surrounding you (v.0.8.2.3a)
• Fixed a crash that could occur on game startup with multi monitor setups and older save files. Now the saved screen resolutions are checked if they are compatible with the current monitor before loaded to prevent crashing the game on startup (v.0.8.2.3a)

Continuing the trend of our latest update we are now granting the shard of conjunction and the shard of change a new unique visual and sound effect which should make using those shards even more satisfying.

New Features:

• Shard of Change has received a visual & sound effect on activation to make using shards more satisfying and improve feedback if the activation was successful. Using the Shard of Change now looks like this:
  
• Shard of Conjunction has received a visual & sound effect on activation to make using shards more satisfying and improve feedback if the activation was successful. Reforging connections between nodes now looks like this:
  

Improvements

• Pathfinder tooltips have been improved. The overall size of the pathfinder tooltips for the maps and map mods are now much smaller in size which will prevent making them flowing outside of the game window.
  
• Vsync is now enabled by default on windowed mode to prevent micro stutters especially in capturing the game via capturing software like OBS

Bugfixes

• Descriptions for different maps in the pathfinder are now back implemented into the game.
• Fixed weird centipede movement where the enemy could end up accelerating and surrounding you (v.0.8.2.3a)
• Fixed a crash that could occur on game startup with multi monitor setups and older save files. Now the saved screen resolutions are checked if they are compatible with the current monitor before loaded to prevent crashing the game on startup (v.0.8.2.3a)

Welcome Wanderers! We want to share our updated roadmap with you all so that you get some insight on what we have planed in our upcoming content updates until the full 1.0 release. Lets start with a recap of the last 6 months of Striving for Light development. Game development is a very dynamic process as we are constantly listening to player feedback and also schedule our updates according to how the game evolves over time. Some features might not bring as much value to players like others so we reschedule planed features to a later or earlied date. This not only affects the announced features but also features we only had in mind and not even announced yet. So looking back at our last posted Roadmap from October last year we implemented most of the announced features along many further features we did not even have on the road map like adding legendary weapons, adding rare/epic weapons with random generated weapon stats or adding 6 new unique playable characters, map tiers, game difficulty settings, twitch& youtube integration, leaderboard build viewer and much more...
We specifically tried to re-schedule features to release as early as possible so that they will get as much testing-time as possible so that we can nail those core features like itemisation, weapon stats, characters and map tiers for endgame balancing for the 1.0 release. That said we did not forget about lore notes and more story content and the steam deck verification.

October 2022- February 2023

Survival Release and lessons learned for Striving for Light

February - Present

New Roadmap --> 1.0 release

With update 0.8.2.2 we are improving the Shard of Refund - Respec algorithm so that the shard should actually be able to refund every valid skill that does not disconnect other skill nodes from the origin. Actully we are really excited about this new algorithm as this was not the most straight forward feature to implement. It took several iterations to make it working for all thinkable complex tree shapes and node connections. Previously you would find yourself using a Shard of Refund and the skill node would simply not be refunded if you had bad luck and the validator algorithm which is crawling along all the active branches of the skill tree got stuck on a dead end. The new algorithm should now be able to crawl the complete tree no matter how much dead ends and how complex the shapes and connections are. This is the new algorithm in action:
The feedback we have received and also the gameplay we watched mostly showed that the Shard of Refund was the least used skill tree shard. Especially in endgame scenarios most players probably have given up hope that the Shard would actually work on important branches as the tree simply just got to complex for the old algorithm. The new algorithm might now make the Shard of Refund an acutal useful tool to revert some early run decissions and respec depending on your weapon drops and how the skill tree evolves. Even in endgame scenarios you should now be able to rely on the Shard of Refund to fine tune your builds. To celebrate this we have also implemented a new respec sound and visual effect that should make respecing feel more impactful and fun.
We have also implemented this effect for the Tree of Light.

Bugfixes:

• Keybindings have been fixed and can now be accessed in game from the pause menu --> options menu.

New Features

• Your current leaderboard rank is now displayed seperately above all leaderboard rankings. As the leaderboard list already is pretty long it is getting more and more time consuming to see your actual ranking. Furthermore only the top 300 entries are displayed. This feature makes it possible to see your leaderboard rank independently from being included in the top 300 or not.
  
• Crafting Tutorial added. When you now collect your first weapon shard a new crafting tutorial will be displayed in the skill tree that introduces new players to all the different crafting options.
  

Bugfixes

• Fixed locale dependent weapon stats display

Bugfixes:

• Fixed locale dependent display of weapon stats in the build viewer due to "." and "," decimal separators. Now for all locales the right weapon stat values should be displayed
• Fixed always displayed weapon glow even on weapons that did not have any weapon stats
• Fixed overflowed weapon stats unlock description
• If Fullscreen and borderless mode is both set active
• If fullscreen is active borderless mode is now always deactivated on game start as this might lead to crashes on the steam deck.
• Fixed not unlocking difficulty tier after run was saved and loaded again
• Fixed some not existing achievements triggering

New Features:

• Constructs can now trigger all legendary on hit and on attack effects
• Stats window and build viewer now also display weapon glow effects

• Constructs now have +2 resource cost and -50% attack speed (unintentionally they did not have any tradeoffs in the last few updates) Melee constructs now attack once each 2 seconds to allign them with range construcs

• Fixed a bug that could lead to a crash when interacting with the leaderboards

New Features:

• Constructs can now trigger all legendary on attack and on hit effects
• Stats window and build viewer now display weapon glowing effects for legendary/rare/epic weapons

• Melee constucts now have +2 endurance cost and -50% attack speed (was unintentionally 0 for both)
• Melee constuct has now attack speed of 0.5 attacks per second to be equal as range constructs (was 1 attack per second)
• Range constucts now have +2 energy cost and -50% attack speed (was unintentionally 0 for both)

• Fixed a bug that could lead to crashes when viewing other builds on the leaderboards

New Features:

• New Legendary Weapon Skill Call Bear
  Your weapon attacks call a bear that attacks for your. Bear attacks count as your melee attacks. Bear lives for 6s. This can appear as a legendary skill on melee and range weapons.
• New Legendary Weapon Skill Light Ray
  Your attacks have a 50% chance to trigger a light ray on enemy hit. This light ray scales with your melee damage and size scales with your AoE size. This can appear as a legendary skill on melee and range weapons.
  
• New item pickup sound effect

Improvements:

• Performance improvements for all projectiles, this should help improve stuttering issues on mass projectile builds (v.0.8.2.1a)
• Darokin is now more intelligent and stays in town so that you only have to rescue him once per run
• Added unlock description to game difficulty tiers
• Added unlock description to characters in character selection
• Added new images to toggle skill tutorial
• Enemy projectiles are now always layered above enemies to make them better visible
• Ice crystal projectiles have more intense glow
• Performance improvements for range constructs

Balancing:

• Slightly reduced enemy & boss hp scaling for easier progress in mid game and to make transition into endgame more fluid
• Shadow Farmer Chickens have less hp scaling in endgame

Bugfixes:

• Fixed a bug that could prevent you from entering the gatekeeper arena after reloading your run
• Fixed dropped legendary weapons converting to non legendary weapons when switching maps
• Fixed text overflow in weapon stats UI
• Fixed map swap when leaving aeodra arena, secret basement bosses and the hideout bosses
• Fixed melee weapon in crafting weapon not being able to be selected on first clicks (v.0.8.2.1a)
• Fixed removed light fragments when a second "unlock character" dialog is chosen at an NPC (v.0.8.2.1a)
• Corrupt save file uploads now display a corrupt upload info instead of crashing the game (v.0.8.2.1b)

Improvements:

• Completly reworked controller cursor navigation in the skilltree and in the pathfinder, you will find the cursor navigation with the controller much smoother now
• Added new controller sensitivity setting in the options which lets you adjust the sensitivity of your thumbsticks, this will give you complete control
• New tooltip system for pathfinder that prevents the tooltips of your map and the tooltips for the radial menu to overlap when using controller input. The tooltips now dynamically re-adjust depending on which radial menu item has focus. This is how it looks in action.
• Hideout Bosses now drop a chest that contains valuable items (v.0.8.2.0e)
  

Balancing:

• Hideout Bosses now have reduced HP scaling
• Shadow Farmer now spawns less chickens, chicken eggs now also have less hit points
• Gatekeepers have reduced HP scaling

Bugfixes:

• Fixed a bug which made it possible to call the pause menu during scene switches which could lead to a screen freeze in the options menu.
• Fixed missing cursor in pathfinder on controller input (v.0.8.2.0c)
• Fixed a bug which caused pressing the public league button to already switch to an online save file (v.0.8.2.0d)
• Fixed missplaced leg on frog enemies (v.0.8.2.0d)
• Fixed a bug that could cause no exit portal to spawn in the hideout arena (v.0.8.2.0e)

With the Hideout Content Update (v.0.8.2) we are adding 6 new playable characters, a new character selection, 3 secret hideout boss encounters, 3 new weapon tiers that feature new weapon stats, a new weapon shard to craft stats onto weapons, improved enemy projectiles, AoE effects and HP bars and much more!

New Season Start

EA-Season 9 will start at 05.04.2023 at 6pm CEST with the release of the hideout update.

New Features

6 New Player Characters

Uncommon/ Rare/ Epic Weapons

• Common weapons have low intensity yellow sparkles
• Uncommon weapons have a yellow beam
• Rare weapons have a blue beam
• Epic weapons have a purple beam

Improved Leaderboard Backend

New Character Selection

New Range Weapon: Darokin's Staff

Pathfinder Improvements

New Collect Item UI

Improvements

• Pathfinder mouse and controller navigation has been improved
• Pathfinder tooltip positioning has been improved
• Improved enemy projectiles
• Improved enemy AoE Effects
• Performance improvements for all enemy projectiles and enemy AoE effects
• Reworked companion movement
• New craft weapon visual effects
• New designed enemy HP bars to make them better readable with the highlighted enemy option
• New enemy HP bars now automatically switch to alternate colour when highlighted enemies option is enabled
• Improved visuals of base characters
• Increased player dodge acceleration to make the dodge more responsive
• Improved Forest Map design
• Highlighting of possible skill connections in the skill tree

Balancing:

• Player invincibility is now 2s after you received damage (was 1s)
• Companions have increased movement speed
• Reduced elite enemy spawn rate has been decreased to 2/4/6/8/10% for Difficulty Tier 1-5 (was 3/6/9/12/15%)
• Gatekeepers and secret bosses now also scale with player level to prevent them being unproportionally easy on the first map
• Bear Caller weapon now has 1 endurance and 1 energy cost (was 1 endurance and 2 energy before)

Bugfixes

• Fixed missing key icon in game UI
• Fixed restarting of original soundtrack when switching between skill tree and gameplay
• Fixed not interactible radial buttons in the pathfinder on first click
• Darokin Rescue event now also uses new NPC model
• Fixed a bug which caused the skill node additional projectiles to not cost any additional energy
• Fixed tooltips in the pathfinder not hiding when they should leading to overlapping tooltips
• Fixed freeze when player died directly on scene load
• Fixes for hidden mouse cursor (if you still have issues with this please report it in discord/via mail or steam forums so that we can gather more information what is actually causing this for some players)

Improvements

• Increased the spawn possibility scaling for the base skill nodes when a lot of skills are already unlocked. This should help keeping the base skill node spawn possibility on the same level as when only a few skills have been unlocked.

New Features:

Map Tiers X - XV

Balancing:

• The higher map tiers now spawn quicker after you have reached level 70
• Enemy HP scaling slightly increased
• Dodge skill now reduce dodge regeneration by -20% instead of reducing max dodge by -1. This should make dodge skills a more valid choice.
• The increased AoE size is now capped to +400% (which is around a screen size for most of the skills) to maintain performance in endgame scenarios.
• Increased spawn possibility of increased critical hit chance skill node
• Reduced drop chance of skill point gem

With update 0.8.1.1 we are introducing a new balancing system to Striving for Light. This new balancing system will make it possible to have a gradual difficulty increase without bloating enemy HPs.

New Features

Map Tiers

Balancing

• Massively reduced enemy hp scaling to only be slightly above pre 0.8 update
• Increased spawn rate of increased melee and increased projectile damage
• Energetic Stone Boss now has larger attack range
• Gatekeeper Iron Frost attacks have been reworked
• Gatekeeper defence objects now have a slight hit cooldown to prevent them being one shotted in endgame. Therefore the hit amount was reduced to 8 (was 10)
• Reduced maximum trap cap by map mods to +200% (was unlimited before) to prevent small maps being overflooded with traps
• Excluded chicken companion and increased collect range from the skill spawn pool. It can be still be obtained by events and added manually to the skill tree.

Bugfixes

• Fixed Lightning Strike scaling with melee damage
• Fixed wrong skill description for the damage of scattering hit and scattering sweep
• Fixed damage description on Fragmentation as those projectiles actually scale with your melee and your projectile damage
• Fixed a crash when entering the secret basement on the Caves map

With update 0.8.1 we are adding 2 new lightning skills which are also available as legendary effects, we are reworking how condition damage works, improving critical hit feedback and controller and steam deck support.

New Features

New Skills

Discharge: New Melee On Attack Skill[/h3
Your melee attacks discharge a lightning ray from your position in a random angle piercing through all enemies in this attack angle. Damage and the amount of discharge rays scale with your skill stacks.

Lightning Strike: New Range On Attack Skill

Critical Hit Feedback

Backend improvements and fixes

Controller/ Steamdeck improvements

Condition Damage Rework

• 1st DoT: 10 (only one basic burning stack)
• 2nd DoT: 10 + 2/3(3x10) = 30
• 3th DoT: 10+ 2/3(20) = 23
• 4th DoT: 10+ 2/3(13) = 18
• 5th DoT: 10+ 2/3(8) = 15
• 6th DoT: 10+ 2/3(5) = 13

Improvements

• Performance improvements to all enemy hit and enemy death visual effects.
• All player projectile trails are now also affected by the player effect transparency setting, so now it is possible to hide your projectiles completely by setting transparency to 0.
• Achievements for already unlocked skills and weapons are now synced on each game start
• Improved visuals of the light staff projectiles

Balancing

• Reduced enemy HP scaling
• Reduced boss HP scaling

Bugfixes

• Fixed weapon achievement description to reflect what weapon has to be unlocked by the NPCs in town and which weapons have to be found defeating bosses
• Fixed tooltips flowing off screen

Improvements

• Improved Fissure distortion shader effect
• Fissure is now traveling in attack direction

Balancing

• Elite enemies now have -20% HP. This should make them less HP sponges in the early game.

Bugfixes

• Fixed range constructs stop shooting at enemies
• Fixed range constructs not aiming at enemies
• Fixed multiple spawned constructs on a single attack
• Fixed missing skill stack count in the skill section of the stats window
• Fixed unlocked weapons when dropping them
• Fixed to early unlocked skills
• Fixed Darokin NPC interact icon misplacement

Improvements

• Game now starts in native full screen mode which should fix issues with wrong display resolutions being detected.

Bugfixes

• Fixed duplicated projectile spawns when picking up a new ranged weapon. This has lead to a massive performance issue on projectile shield but also doubled projectile spawns for normal shots.

Bugfixes:

• Fixed player effect transparency slider not being saved in the options menu. The option should now work as intended.
• Fixed builds not being transmitted to leaderboards.
• Fixed crash when activating coop-mode

Improvements:

• Pet now move faster

Balancing:

• Tree of Light legacy skill nodes for endurance and energy regeneration now grant +30% reg (was +15%)
• Flated out enemy hp scaling a bit for higher delve counts

Bugfixes:

• Fixed not displayed attack cost in the stats window
• Fixed crash when interacting with the leaderboard stone
• Removed duplicated crit stats on skill node tooltips
• Fixed bear caller converting to magic shield when picking up the weapon
• Fixed map completed achievements triggering wrong achievement ID
• Fixed frenzy UI not being show
• Fixed crash when using bear caller
• Fixed bug that caused wrong soundtracks to be played

Welcome back Wanderers to the biggest Update we have ever done for any of our games. Since our last content update for SfL we worked hard to try out and evaluate new directions and concepts with the release of SfL: Survival. We have gathered plenty of feedback and consolidated everything to this massive update that will make SfL appear like a new game with so much new content and QoL improvements. This being said thanks for all your feedback and suggestions that helped bringing Striving for Light to the point.

New Features

New League Start - EA Season 8

5 Difficulty Tiers To Compete

Armory Build Viewer

In-game Achievements

Elite Enemies

New Melee Weapon: Bear Caller

New Range Attack Replacer Skill: Projectile Shield

New Melee On Attack Skill: Fissure

New Critical Hit System

New Life Leech System

New Base Skill Node: Collect Range

Korean, Japanese and Portuguese Localisation

Extended Twitch Livestream Integration

New Damage Number System

Striving for Light: Survival Soundtrack Option

Improvements

• Performance improvements for player projectiles and companions
• Performance improvements for enemy movement and enemy collisions
• Improved responsiveness of player character movement
• Improved enemy hit visual effect
• Chests now always spawn in front of the gatekeeper portal to reduce backtracking and make the overall game experience more fluid.
• Player effect transparency slider has been added to the options menu to make your projectiles, skill effects and companions partially translucent.
• Completely reworked all enemy projectile + trap colour and contrasts to make them better visible.
• Added option to give enemies a red outline to make them better standout on various backgrounds.
• Updated some of the skill node textures with clearer representations of the skill node.
• Added option to display player damage screen overlay effect to improve player hit feedback.
• Environment effects got reworked.
• New weapon trails and a new weapon swing visual effect was added.
• Reworked skill tooltip damage and trigger possibility calculation. Skill tooltips got some futher reporks.
• Improved widescreen support for environment effects.
• Added new player level up effect.
• Added new button hover and button click sound feedback.
• Melee constructs can now trigger double hit.
• Fissure has been added as legendary effect.
• Visual Improvements for Double Hit and Clash of Steel.
• New NPC models for Darokin, the old man of Ankerath, Heleja, the scholar of Ankerath and Goladir the blacksmith of Ankerath
• Exploding dodge now shows that the skill is actually scaling with your projectile damage
• Random starting skills have been replaced with static skill selection to ensure a balanced distribution of skill variety.

Balancing

• Increased default endurance and energy regeneration on fresh run to 1.5/s (was 1.0/s)
• Max endurance and max energy skill nodes now increase your max resources by +2 (was +1)
• Increased endurance and energy regeneration now increase your regeneration by +100% (was +60%)
• Increased companon damage skill nodes now decrease your endurance and energy regeneration by -30% (was -25% attack speed and -15% dodge regeneration)
• Increased condition damage skill nodes now decrease your endurance and energy regeneration by -30% (was -15% attack speed and -20% endurance and -20 energy regeneration)
• Reduced frenzy exp bonus and rebalanced frenzy time limit scaling for high frenzy stacks
• Trembling ground now has -50% attack speed
• Increased melee damage has been decreased to +70% (was 80%)
• Constructs have been removed from the legendary effect pool.
• Enemy HP scaling has been increased for the endgame.

Bugfixes

• Plenty of smaller bugfixes

Known issues

As many might already be hyped about the upcoming 0.8 content update we want to give you some news on our progress and plans for all the new stuff coming to Striving for Light. Actually the scope for 0.8 has steadily increased since we last posted our initial plans for the 0.8 content update. Our 0.8 anouncement: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1646790/view/3642883289649903034?l=english So lets summarize what was already planed for 0.8:

• New Side Dungeons
• New Item Type
• Difficulty Tiers
• In-game achievements
• Pathfinder rework

Armory and Build View Integration

Performance Improvements

Update 0.8.0 will contain

• Armory and Build Viewer
• Difficulty Tiers
• Endgame rebalancing
• In-game achievements
• Pathfinder rework

Update 0.8.1will contain

• New Side Dungeons
• New Item Type
• more to be announced...

Difficulty Tiers

Join the next Igniting Spark Games Developer Livestream on Twitch on Sunday 29th Jan. at 7pm CET/ 10AM PST. Join at: https://www.twitch.tv/deventide Bring and hang out with us! We are looking forward to read you in chat!

[previewyoutube=TUs24n17ml4;full][/previewyoutube] We are happy to announce a new upcoming game originated from Striving for Light!

Striving for Light: Survival

It's our take on the roguelite arena survival genre!

So what is this game exactly?

What makes it different from Striving for Light?

Wishlist now!

New Features

New dynamic healthbar

Improvements

• NPCs in town now recognize immediately that you have enough light to unlock weapons and skills.
• Replaced shadow behind player character with additional light source. This should make the player outline better visible in dark environments.

Bugfixes

• Fixed unlock notification window blocking pause menu buttons for mouse input.
• Fixed wrong tooltips on stats window elements.

New Features

Improvements

• All companions (melee and range) now are able to trigger enemy on death effects that are not bound to your weapons like fragmentation.
• If you have multiple of the same skill nodes active the stats window will now display the total amount of each skill node

Bugfixes

• Fixed a crash when pressing a button in the skill tree while the placement of a skill gem or skill tree item is active
• Fixed blocked UI elements when crafting window in the skill tree is open
• Fixed a bug which caused to large window/ game resolution settings from other system (steam cloud) to launch the game in very suboptimal settings. Its now checked if the saved settings are valid for the current system and if not they are replaced with the native OS settings.

We are already working on the next major update (Version 0.8) for Striving for Light. There is a lot to cover so this is what it will bring to Striving for Light.

New Side Dungeons

New Item Type

Difficulty Tiers

In game achievements

Pathfinder rework

Beyond 0.8

Different Character Classes

Changes to Unlocks

Changes to skill system

Improvements:

• Fragment of Light has received a visual overhaul.
  
• Reworked some glow amber particle effects.
• Improved tooltip positioning for the pathfinder.

Bugfixes:

• Rolling stone enemies now don't roll to the outside of the map.
• Fixed cut off dialog for the old man world event.
• Fixed cut off dialog for the emerald staff effect description.

New features:

• You can now delete your save files within the game by using the delete button on the save file entry. So there is now no need to head to the save location to get rid of old season save files or to delete your private league save files. When pressing the delete button a confirmation dialog will ask you to confirm the deletion of the save file.
• The offline save file is now also displayed as the first entry in the list of save games. This makes it clearer what save games you have available. You can now also easily delete the offline save file to start with a new save file within the game.

Improvements:

• The damage number cap has been reworked to display a maximum of 10 damage numbers each 0.1 s (before 1 / 0.05 s). The overall goal is to still keep damage numbers readable in endgame scenarios but still display enough numbers to actually get a feeling on how much damage you deal. Let us know if this cap feels reasonable.

Bugfixes:

• Fixed a bug which caused to load a new save game with a dead character in rare cases after creating a new save file.

Improvements:

• Limit to damage numbers to keep them readable in the endgame scenarios and to limit the performance impact. You might have noticed that in the endgame a lot of damage numbers can pop up which could make them unreadable and therefore miss the purpose of having them in the game. With the new damage number spawn limit only a maximum amount of 20 damage numbers per second can be displayed which keeps them readable and minimises the performance hit.
• Improvements and fixes for stuttering with v-sync in window mode. This should solve stuttering issues especially on capturing the game via OBS or other video capturing software.

Bugfixes:

• Fixed old man missing dialog.
• Some on attack effects of legendary weapons have not been applied to range constructs after weapon switch. Now all on attack effects are immediately updated.
• Fixed infinite map loading bug for endgame maps (v.0.7.2.1c)
• Increased message queue length to support skill trees with very high number of skill nodes (v.0.7.2.1c)

Bugfixes: Fixed recurring crashes on loading save files. If someons still gets crashes on loading save files or when opening the skill tree, please report it via the bugreport button or via discord and please attache your save file where you get the crashes so that we can fix it as soon as possible. Join the official discord: https://discord.com/invite/GNEBkQDyUb

• You can now remove weapons from the town and receive a small gift of appreciation from the old man once you unlocked gambling.

• The Aeodra portal now also has to be interacted with the interaction key to enter the portal. This should prevent accidentally entering the arena during fights.
• Increased minimap icon size of fragments of light.

• Fixed wrong displayed/calculated damage of weapons on tooltips.
• Fixed cut off weapon description in weapon stats.
• Fixed mouse cursor on reward and unlock UI's jump to the top left of the window.
• Fixed double tooltips on reward and unlock UI's.
• Fixed a bug which caused a random map environment to be loaded instead of the previous environment when exiting a secret boss arena.

Improvements

• Performance improvements for all snake/worm like enemies. You might have noticed decreased FPS in the desert map or other maps where snake like enemies were present. You should now have a fluid experience on those maps as well.

Bugfixes:

• Fixed crash when opening/closing the gamble window

With the Hunt & Rescue Content Update we are introducing two new world events, a gambling system, damage numbers and winter themed weapons to Striving for Light. With this update we are also kicking off Season 7 of our Early Access Online Leaderbords.

Hunt Event

Rescue Event

Gambling

Fragments of Light Limit

Damage Numbers

Winter is here!

New way to report bugs!

Controller Support

Further Improvements

• Weapon Shard now also have unique loot beams to make item drops better visible.
• Destroyable world objects can now be destroyed by all skills.
• Explode skills have now smaller distortion VFX which should improve performance using this skill with large AoE increase.
• Piercing blow melee skill got visually reworked.

Condition damage:

• Subsequent damage over time ticks now deal all equal damage instead of slightly reduced damage for continuous ticks. This will ramp up condition damage in general.
• Increased condition damage skill node now increases condition damage by +100% (was 70%) and reduces attack speed by -15% (was -10%), energy regeneration by -20% (was -30%) and endurance regeneration by -20% (was -30%).

[Melee Skill] Piercing blow

General Balancing

• Increased Boss HP.
• Increased Gatekeeper HP.
• Adjusted player exp level curve. In the endgame exp curve has been adjusted slightly to give a steeper exp increase for very high player levels.
• Reduced attack speed of great sword.
• Enemy HP now also scale slightly with player levels.

• Fixed corrupted merchant projectiles having too short range.
• Fixed some legendary effects not being triggered.
• Fixed a bug which did not apply projectile damage to burst skills correctly.
• The throwing spear ranged weapon now no longer bypasses the immune to knockback map modifier.

With the Hunt & Rescue Content Update we are introducing two new world events, a gambling system, damage numbers and winter themed weapons to Striving for Light! With this update we are also kicking of Season 7 of our Early Access Online Leaderbords.

The update will release at the 21th December at 7pm CET.

Hunt Event

Rescue Event

Gambling

Damage Numbers

Winter is here!

Balancing & Bugfixes

• Added a new melee version of explode which scales with your melee damage instead of projectile damage.
• In the skill tree and the pathfinder music presence is now rolled back by a smooth transition. This should make a more relaxed atmosphere while crafting your builds and modifying your maps before jumping back into the action.

• Constructs can now attack destroyable world objects by their own.
• Improved gamepad navigation for the pathfinder.
• The trembling ground effect is now positioned below enemies. On huge AoE size trembling ground just overlayed everything making enemies and enemy projectiles very hard to see. This should now be fixed by proper layering of the particle effects.

• Fixed a bug which caused projectile damage to not be applied correctly.
• Fixed a bug which caused the altered base damage of ranged weapons from crafting not being displayed and updated projectile damage correctly
• Fixed a bug which caused the frenzy mode 1 exp gained message to show up even though no frenzy mode was started
• Fixed disappearing cursor when using gamepad on the pathfinder.

New Features

• When using a shard of power you now see the applied difference in base weapon damage.
• When using a shard of quality you now see an additional failed or success information.
• You can now only apply a shard of power if the weapon is not already maxed out. This should prevent re-rolling the base weapon damage from the highest possible value to a much lower value. Its now also displayed once a weapon is maxed outcraft.
• Companions can now destroy world objects (v.0.7.1.2b)

Improvements

• Player health bar now scales even further down to make +100 hearts visible on the screen (v.0.7.1.2c)

Balancing

• Massively increased shard of quality legendary crafting chance.
• Slightly reduced shard of quality drop rate.
• Increased the aeodra arena exp reward, the exp reward is now scaling with the dungeon floor you are visiting the arena.
• Increased melee damage skill node now increases +80% base weapon damage (was +100 %)
• Exploding Projectile skill nodes now additionally scales with your projectile damage (v.0.7.1.2a)
• Exploding Hit skill nodes now additionally scales with your projectile damage (v.0.7.1.2a)
• Bursting Shot skill node now additionally scales with your melee and your projectile damage (v.0.7.1.2a)
• Fragmentation skill node now additionally scales with your melee and your projectile damage (v.0.7.1.2a)

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug which caused shard of quality have a much lower chance to craft a legendary item.
• Fixed a bug which caused altered base weapon stats from crafting not being saved.
• Fixed a bug which caused hearts in the aeodra arena getting lost on scene switch.
• Fixed a bug which caused old save file which have not completed all levels to forever stay on dungeon floor 1.
• Fixed wrong tooltips on merchant UI when revisiting the merchant later on.
• Fixed several wrong calculated skill damage numbers in the skill tooltips on when having multiple stacks active (v.0.7.1.2a)
• Fixed player cloak layering (v.0.7.1.2a)
• Added further description for emerald staff that spiders count as companions (v.0.7.1.2a)
• Fixed range weapon shard of recast not changing the embedded skill of a legendary weapon (v.0.7.1.2b)
• Fixed wrong displayed resource cost on legendary weapons with embedded skills (v.0.7.1.2b)
• Fixed shard of recast not working on ranged legendary weapons (v.0.7.1.2b)
• Fixed bosses having to low player detection range (v.0.7.1.2c)
• Fixed stone smasher gatekeeper projectiles having reduced range (v.0.7.1.2c)

New Features

• Map mods now have legendary drop rate and weapon shard drop rate modifiers. So now you can enjoy increased legendary and weapon shard drop rates on higher tier maps.
• Map mods now have weapon drop rate as a modifier. So you can now enjoy higher weapon drop chances on higher tier maps.
• Added small tutorial hint for the crafting window that a weapon has to be selected first in order to craft.

Improvements

• Triggered AoE Effects are now positioned on the enemy instead of next to the enemy. This should make it easier to apply conditions with smaller AoE effect sizes.
• [Ranged Weapon] Unstable Potion has received a new SFX when the poison splash gets triggered.

Balancing

• [Skill Node] Increased Condition Damage is increased to +70 % condition damage (was +50%) (v.0.7.1.1a).
• Readjusted drop rates of all shards, in general drop chances of all shard has been increased.
• Massively increased drop chances for weapon shards from chests (there was a 0 too much :) )
• Increased drop rate for weapon shards.
• Increased exp reward of Aeodra Arena.
• Enemies now also have a small chance in dropping weapons.
• Small adjustment to enemy spawn rates in the Aeodra Arena.
• Boomerang now decreases your attack speed by -50% to balance out the power gain on increased attack range. Especially when using slower weapons with high base weapon damage.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug which caused condition damage stacks to deal always 10 damage instead of the actual increased damage per damage tick (v.0.7.1.1a)
• Fixed not saved settings on first game launch. When you experienced weird behaviour when first launching the game and changing resolution or also the sound volume and it reverted back instead of saving it. This all should now be fixed.
• Fixed the UI scaling bug on the Tree of Light legacy UI.
• Fixed to small player detection radius on enemies and bosses.
• Fixed Flood skill not reducing cooldown time on increased skill stacks.
• Fixed a crash when picking up a flail weapon.
• Fixed a bug which only let you aquire one chicken companion skill gem at once from the chicken in town.

Improvements

• Weapon Shard Items can now also be obtained from the merchant (v.0.7.1.0c)
• Improved visual effects for the unstable potion ranged weapon poison splash (v.0.7.1.0c)

Balancing

• [Range Weapon] Unstable Potion: Now inflicts poison stacks also on bullet hit additionally to have a 30% chance in triggering a poison splash AoE effect. Base Weapon Attack Speed reduced to 1.1/s (was 1.0/s). Attack Cost has been increased to compensate the power gain to 1 Endurance and 1 Energy (was 1 Endurance).

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug which caused legendaries to vanish on gatekeeper and aeodra arenas (v.0.7.1.0a)
• Fixed a bug which caused legendary weapon vfx being always active on certain weapons (v.0.7.1.0a)
• Fixed a bug which caused unreliable projectile range behaviour with reverting shot and increased projectile range nodes. Mostly the projectile range increase of skill nodes was only affecting the first spawned projectiles and had no effect on later spawned projectiles. (v.0.7.1.0b)
• Fixed a crash when entering secret boss arena on void map (v.0.7.1.0c)
• Fixed a crash when changing ranged weapons with active range attack replacer skills (v.0.7.1.0c)
• Fixed a crash on certain enemies with reverting projectiles (v.0.7.1.0c)
• Charge does now actually scale the projectile damage when charging projectiles (v.0.7.1.0c)

Here are the full patch notes for the Legendary Content Update (v. 0.7.1.0) featuring legendary weapons, a crafting system, reworked stats window and skill gem UI, reworked skills, balancing changes and further highly requested improvements.

The Legendary Content Update will be released on Monday 28th of November at 8pm CET.

Legendary Weapons

Crafting System

• Shard of Power
  A shard which holds the power to modify the base damage of any weapon.
• Shard of Quality
  A shard which holds the potential to transform a normal weapon into a legendary weapon.
• Shard of Recast
  A shard with the power to recast an embedded skill into something new.

Reworked Weapons

New Damage Scaling

Reworked Stats Window

New skill gem filters

New increased Condition Damage Skill Node

• Ability skill nodes that deal condition damage now also display the total damage per tick considering all skill stacks and increased condition damage nodes.
• On each new skill tree there will always be a ranged and melee ability node spawned near the centre.
• You can now search the skill tree with the shortcut CTRL+F and end the search with the return button.
• Decreased volume of intro cinematic.
• Weapon stats can now be viewed directly when walking over a weapon without the need to equip it.
• Weapon stats can now be viewed anytime from the stats or the crafting window.
• Portals now require to interact to use them. This should prevent not intended interactions when accidentally walking near a portal when during fights.
• Added a save button in the options menu that simply saves your altered settings, you can use this button if the back button does not automatically save your changed settings.

General

• Increased base character movement speed.

Weapons

• [Melee Weapon] Hammer: Smash AoE does now scales with player melee damage. Base damage has been increased to 16 (was 10). Hammer attack animation was reworked leading to an overall faster hit attack animation.
• [Melee Weapon] Elder Club: Decreased attack speed and upated attack animation. Base damage got reduced to 25 (was 30).
• [Melee Weapon] Greatsword: Base damage got reduced to 18 (was 20).
• [Ranged Weapon] Unstable Potion: Deals 7 base damage (was 5).
• [Melee Weapon] Searing Axe: Weapon has been renamed to Ripping Axe.
• [Melee Weapon] Greatsword: Reduced attack speed of greatsword.

Aeodra Arena

Skills

• Increased Endurance Regeneration is increased to +60 % (was +50)
• Increased Energy Regeneration is increased to +60 % (was +50)
• Decreased the spawn rate of attack speed skill nodes in the skill tree.
• Increased spawn rate of Projectile Multiplicator skill nodes.
• Increased spawn rate of Empowered Companions skill nodes.
• Increased spawn rate of Projectile Damage skill nodes.
• Empowered companions now has less dodge regeneration malus -15% (was -25%)
• Increased Dodge Regeneration skill node now increases Dodge Regeneration by +40% (was +20%)
• Trembling Ground does now trigger 3 On Hit effects instead of On Attack Effects this should also make it possible to combine the attack replacer skill with more other skills.
• Wind shock has reduced knockback strength.

Legacy Tree

• Attack speed legacy skill nodes now grant +5% attack speed ( was 3%).
• Dodge Regeneration legacy skill nodes now grant 15% increased dodge regeneration (was 5%).

Enemy

• Increased Gatekeeper max HP.
• Increased Arda, the fallen max HP.

Drop Chances

• Increased drop rate of Fragment of Light.
• Increased drop rate of skill tree shards and map shards.

• Fixed a bug which prevented the Skill Ability Flood to only hit enemies once. This mainly affected bosses as only one time damage could be dealt.
• Fixed a bug which caused set resolution not being saved when entering the options menu from the main menu.
• Fixed darkness challenge reward window effect scaling on ultra wide monitors.
• Various smaller bugfixes

In this post we are going to take a deep dive into the new weapon tier we are adding with the Legendary Content Update (Version 0.7.1)... yes, you guess it right, we are adding legendary weapons to the game. And we will also take a closer look on how you can modify weapons with the new introduced crafting system.

The Legendary Content Update will be released on Monday 28th of November at 8pm CET.

Legendary Weapons

Crafting System

• Shard of Power
  A shard which holds the power to modify the base damage of any weapon.
• Shard of Quality
  A shard which holds the potential to transform a normal weapon into a legendary weapon.
• Shard of Recast
  A shard with the power to recast an embedded skill into something new.

Reworked Weapons

Improvements

• The health bar is now dynamically decreasing the size to fit all of the max health onto the screen. Yes, actually players managed to break the game and gain over 50 health.
• Re-enabled player cloak. Did anyone notice that the cloak was missing? We didn't...

In this post we are going to take a deep dive into some of the UI improvements coming with the Legendary Content Update (Version 0.7.1) and a small hint which features you may also expect with the upcoming Striving for Light Update.

Crafting

Skill Gem Window

Stats Window

Skill Tree

Skill Reworks

And more...

Almost a week has past since our 0.7 Aeodra content update release with plenty of smaller improvements and bugfixes already, so you might ask yourself whats next. On this post we will give you some insight in what we are working on for the next bigger update 0.7.1 and give a hint for the scope of the 0.8 content update. As already mentioned before our 0.7 update release we will adjust the pricing for Striving for Light tomorrow (17.11.22) 7pm CET. So there is still time to get the game on the lower price before the adjustment happens.

Pricing

Update 0.7.1

Reworked Skill Gem Window

New Weapon Stats

Skill Rework

Update 0.8

New side dungeons

New item type

• Portal to town in tutorial is now automatically opened if tutorial boss is defeated.
• Improvements to input responsibility routines. This should make button presses to switch scenes more reliable.
• Portals are now interactible after scene switch without needing to walk away and approach them again.
• Companions refresh their attacks now which should yield much more constant damage output also if they don't move.

Companion Rebalancing

• Companions have increased attack range.
• Range companion has increased projectile speed.
• Companions have faster movement and attack speed and in general are more responsive to your movement.
• Wolf Companion: Cost has been reduced to only reduce resource regeneration of energy/endurance by -40% (was energy/endurance regeneration -50% and reduced max energy and endurance by -1)
• Range Companion: Cost has been reduced to only reduce resource regeneration of energy/endurance by -40% (was energy/endurance regeneration -50% and reduced max energy and endurance by -1)
• Chicken Companion: Cost has been reduced to only reduce resource regeneration of energy/endurance by -40% (was energy/endurance regeneration -50% and reduced max energy and endurance by -1)
• Bursting Companion: Cost has been reduced to only reduce resource regeneration of energy/endurance by -20% (was energy/endurance regeneration -40%)

• Fixed double hit and melee constructs not being able to attack bosses, especially gatekeepers and deal any damage.
• Fixed skill effects sometimes not being shown on false culling. Now skill effects should always be displayed also on gatekeeper fights, where you tend to fight long on one spot where this issue previously occured.

Hovered nodes in the skill tree and in the pathfinder are now highlighted to improve visibility especially on playing with controller.

• Increased mouse cursor size.
• Tooltips are now activated from the whole boxes and not only the icons.
• Reworked active button visuals to better highlight which button is currently hovered and has focus.
• [Range Skill] Charge: Charge now also increases the projectile damage up to x3 depending on your charge duration, with a maximum charge duration of 3 seconds.

• Fixed crash when talking to the chicken in town multiple times.
• Fixed missing German translation for Searing Axe description.

New Tutorial Game Guide

• The pathfinder window can now be closed by pressing the ESC button on the keyboard.
• New save games now get one from each skill tree shard for explaining their functionality with the new tutorial guides.
• Increased visibility of enemy and trap projectiles.

• Fixed errors in the localisation.

• [Range Skill] Range Construct: Increased enemy detection range.
• [Melee Weapon] Hammer: Increased Ground Slam size.
• [Bleeding Swirl] Reworked the skill to make it less distracting and prevent nausea. Decreased size of Bleeding Swirl, reduced the swirling speed and they now also not move to target radius. They now swirl at a constant radius. This should also make it easier to target enemies with this skill.
  
• The Shard of Refund validator algorithm has been improved so that circular skill tree shapes are still able to be broken up and refunded. Note that this new validator is not active for runs that are already in progress. It will automatically switch to the new validator scheme on your next run. (Since Version 0.7.0.0f).
  
• Added missing information that Flood Skill is scaling with AoE size.
• Improved Skill Tooltips.

• Fixed wrong skill description for Trembling Ground. Trembling Ground is triggering 3 On Attack Effects (wrongly stated that its triggering On Hit Effects).
• Map Modifier that makes enemies immune to knockback now actually makes enemies also immune to knockback from AoE and skill effects.
• Fixed a crash which could occur on refunding skills with the new validator algorithm.

Improvements

• The Shard of Refund validator algorithm has been improved so that circular skill tree shapes are still able to be broken up and refunded. Note that this new validator is not active for runs that are already in progress. It will automatically switch to the new validator scheme on your next run.

Improvements

• You can now deactivate the controller shake in the options menu.
• Arena Reward now displays the EXP amount with also taking the map exp modifiers into account.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug which caused merchant trade UI not opening after a first trade has been made.
• Fixed a bug which unintentionally unpaused the game on lost focus when the setting "pause game on lost focus" is active.

Improvements

• When enabling the twitch streamer checkbox you will also get a preview of your twitch link to make it easier to see if your player name matches your twitch name.
• The Aeodra dialog when choosing your arena reward now only triggers with 30% possibility instead of each time.
• Small improvements for the voice acting.

Balancing

• The boss amount in the secret boss room is now always 1 independend from the increased boss amounts of map modifiers.

Bugfixes

• Fixed closed portal for secret boss rooms.
• Fixed a bug which caused to reset the active map when leaving the new arena.
• You now not need to switch scenes to trigger the unlock weapon/skills dialog from the NPCs in town.
• Fixed leaving the new arena map resetting the fog of war on the previous map.
• Fixed missing weapon description for Searing Axe.

We are happy to announce all the upcoming new features and improvements coming with the Aeodra Content Update (Version 0.7) on the 10th of November 2022, 7pm CET. With this update we are also kicking off the Early-Access Season 5.

Streamer Race Event

Arena Mode

New Skills

• [Melee Attack Replacer Skill] Melee Construct:
  Your melee attacks create a melee construct instead of attacking directly. The melee construct performs 1 melee attack each 2 seconds and triggers all On Attack and On Hit Effects like your attacks do. Multiple constructs can be active at a time.
• [Range Attack Replacer Skill] Range Construct:
  Your range attacks create a range construct instead of attacking directly. The range construct performs 1 range attack each 2 seconds and triggers all On Attack and On Hit Effects like your attacks do. Multiple constructs can be active at a time.
• [Melee Attack Replacer Skill] Trembling Ground:
  You slam the ground in front of you creating a trembling shockwave traveling away from you. The shockwave is always triggering 3 On Attack Effects without hitting enemies. The size of trembling ground is scaling with your AoE size.

New Weapon

New Intro Cinematic

New Story Content

• The complete story has been reworked with new improved voice acting

New Dialog System

• Dialog options are now displayed in a new dialog hub when talking to NPCs
• Redesigned dialog UI

Improved Leaderboard System

• Death indicator Whenever a character with a new personal highscore gets defeated the leaderboard entry will display a death indicator that shows that the personal best run of the player has ended. The icon will be removed whenever a new personal best run is active.
• Twitch Stream integration Streamers can choose to receive a streamer badge for their leaderboard appearance by selecting the "twitch streamer" checkbox when joining the public league. Whenever a streamer plays Striving for Light it will be highlighted in the leaderboard with an online icon. Hovering over the streamer name will show information about the current livestream as title, stream language, how long the stream is already online, the viewer count and their twitch channel. You can easily join any livestream easily by clicking on a twitch badge.

Companion Rework

• Redesigned melee and ravaging companions. The melee companion is now renamed to wolf companion and now calls a permanent wolf companion at your side.
• Improved companion pathing and movement. This should make companions in general more useful and prevent them from getting stuck too easy. Companions movement speed now scales with the player movement speed so that they can keep up with you.

Controller Support

• Skill gem menu list now always follows focus on controller input
• Node Navigation with the Dpad now uses animated cursor movement to better visualise the rapid cursor movement instead of directly jumping to the next focused node.
• Cursor is now hidden when activating the radial menu in the pathfinder UI when using controller input
• Cursor speed now scales and adjusts to the actual screen resolution

World Events

• Events are no longer interrupted by switching scenes directly on enemy spawns

Pathfinder

• Back button now changes dynamically to make clearer when a new map has been selected and can be played.

Tree of Light - Legacy Skill Tree

• Improved UI

• Slightly increased gatekeeper HP

• Fixed another bug which caused melee on hit skills not being activated on gatekeeper fights.
• Fixed wrong damage numbers in the tooltips for condition skills and improved condition damage tooltips for better clarity
• The smith and librarian now only tells you to bring them more light fragments if there are still skills and weapons left to unlock
• Fixed a bug which caused the node navigation on controller input not correctly focusing the node which required to manually move the cursor to be able to interact with it. Jumping between nodes on the pathfinder and the skill tree now always grabs the right focus and makes it possible to interact with the focused object.
• Fixed melee on hit effects only being triggered one time after scene switch when using double hit.

We are hyped to announce a Streamer Race Event and the 5th Season for the Striving for Light Early Access. The new content update will also bring massive improvements and new features to the leaderboard system which we will dive into right now.

Streamer Race

Leaderboard System

Death Indicator

Twitch Integration

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug which caused projectiles not hitting bosses if they have been spawned from hitting the boss. This was mostly noticeable on gatekeeper fights.
• Fixed a bug which caused skill effects not being displayed and wrongly culled on gatekeeper boss fights. Leading to confusion which skills are triggered and which not.
• Fixed some overflowing UI elements.

Update 0.6.3.3 brings some highly requested improvements next to some major bug fixes to Striving for Light.

New Features

• Increased Projectile Range and Speed now has its own unique skill icon:
  

Improvements

Improved Player positioning

Improved damage calculation on skill tooltips

Improved skill gem window

Improved font sizes

Bugfixes

• Fixed a major bug which caused a lot of melee skills to not deal any damage unless you had skilled additional melee damage. Affected skills: Double Hit, Cutting Shot, Clash of Steel, Windshock.
• Fixed a bug which caused pressed skill tree shards to be highlighted even though they lost focus on controller input.

Improvements

• Increased overall font sizes to make fonts better readable on the steam deck.
• Increased dialog box sizes.
• Improved readability of tutorial fonts.

Bufixes

• Fixed a recursion for wrong dialog box assets being assigned from latest patch.

New features

• Your game zoom is now saved when exiting the game and restored on your next gaming session.
• Esc button can now be used to close the skill tree and the legacy window.

Improvements

• Added improved game logo.
• Enemy bullet contrast has been increased for the cellar and the ice floor enemies.
• The game has now english as default language.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a few bugs with condition damage stacking which made multiple condition stacks only increase the damage ticks by 1 instead of 10.
• Fixed wrong asset dependency for dialog boxes.

Content Update 0.7 Release Date

New Content

Hall of Persistence

New story content

Future Pricing

Bugfixes

• Fixed crashes related to changed keybindings on game start and on saving the game settings.

Improvements

• New game logo has been added to the game
  

Bugfixes

• Fixed a crash when opening the stats window when emerald staff is equipped
• Fixed a crash due to negative attack speed values

Bugfixes

• Fixed wrong attack directions on controler input when using the right thumb stick to aim.

Improvements

• Game now initially start in fullscreen with the right screen resolution assigned.
• Game now initially starts with reduced music volume.
• Always on top mode has been disabled for borderless window mode to enable alt tabing out of the game.
• Camera Shake is now activated by default on initial game start.
• Enemy health bars are now activated by default on initial game start.

Improvements

• Improved the visual effects for Staff of the Phoenix projectiles.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug which caused your increased projectile damage to only be applied on the first spawned projectile. Now all subsequent projectile spawns have the right additional projectile damage applied to them.

New Features

Dynamic skill damage tooltips

Health Bars

Improvements

• Particle effect culling threshold has been increased to display a few overlapping particle effects.

Balancing changes

• [Skills] Flood: Cooldown time can be now decreased with the amount of active flood skills in the skill tree.
• [Skills] Clash of Steel: Now additionally scales with player melee damage.
• [Skills] Glaring Light: Now additionally scales with player melee damage.
• Increased drop chance for Shard of Augmentation.

Bugfixes

• [Skill] Increased Melee Damage: This skill now increases the melee damage by 15 (this was 10 before).
• Coop-Object in the town now has the right mini map icon.
• Fixed a crash when entering the woods.
• Small adjustments for player light.
• Fixed a bug and crash for spawning multiple companions (v.0.6.3.2b)

New Features

Particle Effect Performance

Player Camera

Player Light

• Replaced bloom/glow effect by adjusted player lighting which overall leads to less blurriness. Player light now has a colour gradient which adds nice colour tones to the environment.
• Player light source is now also reduced in brightness when starting coop mode to prevent blown out colours when both players are near each other. It reverts back when ending the coop mode.

Improvements

• Added slight sharpening effect which should make up for the blur that comes with the FXAA antialiasing.
• Ground tutorial font now has outlines to increase readability.

Bugfixes

• Fixed wrong displayed projectile damage in stats window.
• Fixed camera movement jumps on loading a new scene.
• Fixed blown out colours on lightning staff.

[previewyoutube=YgY63ZFMjik;full][/previewyoutube] With update 0.6.3.0 we are overhauling the combat experience by adding new hit effects and feedbacks like camera shake as well as adding a spatial sound effect system to Striving for Light. We also are adding two new skills with new unique mechanics and a new weapon along some balancing changes and bugfixes.

New Features

Hit Effects

Spatial Sound Effects

New Skills

New Weapon

Balancing

• [Dagger] Reduced melee damage to 8 (was 10)
• [Light Staff] Increased projectile speed to 400 (was 300)
• [Darkness Staff] Increased projectile speed to 350 (was 250)

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug which caused condition damage to not get updated correctly leading to lower condition damage.

New features

• Added glow and bloom post processing effects.

Improvements

• Improved enemy hit vfx.

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug which caused on melee hit trigger effects to not stack and only dealing single damage instead of a multiplied amount. This bug caused a lot of melee trigger effects to not deal the right amount of damage. For example Explode on melee hit did not stack if it was skilled multiple times as well as Poison Nova on melee hit which only applied the condition 1 time. This is now fixed and applies the condition amounts equal to the amount the skill was activated in the skill tree. This bug overall reduced melee damage by a big amount on build which utilise multiple equal on melee hit skills from the skill tree.
• Fixed a bug which prevented old saved runs to activate the first map in the pathfinder.
• Fixed missing enemies in the tutorial on new save files when the game was left and resumed.

Thanks for being part of our game development journey for Striving for Light. We want to share our current early access roadmap to give you a basic idea of the upcoming content & feature updates. You are invited to join our discord and participate in the ongoing development of Striving for Light! Join the official Discord!

New Features

Steam Cloud Saves

Improvements

• [Melee Weapon] Shortsword: Improved sword animations.

Balancing

• Enemies now have reduced HP scaling. Enemies on the second floor now have 46 HP (was 60 HP before). This should make progressing through the early game much more fluid and fun. This should also compensate for some of the recent regeneration system changes.

Bugfixes:

• [Coop] Fixed a bug which caused a 90 offset in attack direction for some attack inputs

With Update 0.6.2.0 we are adding an extensive new feature to Striving for Light. A local multiplayer coop-mode. And here is how it looks in action. [previewyoutube=FWBzFbrudn8;full][/previewyoutube]

New Features

Local Coop-Mode

Steam Remote Play Together

Bugfixes

• Fixed wrong displayed melee weapon damage in weapon pick up stats
• Improved layering in gatekeeper arenas to make all skill effects visible. Some skills previously got hidden behind the ground layer of the gatekeeper arena.
• Fixed lightning staff projectiles not triggering scattering projectiles or other projectile related skills.
• Fixed a crash related to skill gem placement on controller input.

A new feature for Striving for Light will be revealed today at 3 pm CEST. We will reveal the new feature on a developer livestream on twitch at: https://www.twitch.tv/deventide So bring some coffee, snacks and all your questions. See you in chat!

Update 0.6.1.7 brings a new notification UI for collected items like skill shards, map shards, or skill gems. The UI will also display some general information about the collected item like the item type to get a better overview what was collected. Furthermore skill gems are now items which can be collected like the other shards.

• A new notification UI has been added which will pop up when ever you pick up a new skill shard, map shard or skill gem to make clear what item type has been collected.
  
• Skill Gems are now droppable items to make it clearer when you actually picked up and received a new skill gem. So from now on unlocking new skills in town, trading at the merchant or completing a skill gem event on the map will drop a collectible skill gem.

• Improved main menu visual effects.

• Fixed a bug which prevented active runs before the pathfinder update to activate maps.
• Fixed some typos in the skill descriptions.
• Fixed item drop position to prevent items spawning outside the map.

Bugfixes

• Emerald Staff: Fixed rotated spider pet spawn.
• Fixed paused game after weapon or skill unlock has been chosen.
• Fixed player performing an attack after closing the leaderbord and Tree of Light UI.
• Fixed a crash when pressing enter in the skill tree search bar on mouse/key inputs.
• Fixed pause menu not being interactable when unlock notification is active.

Upate 0.6.1.6b

• All boss soundtracks are now used for the gatekeeper fights and are now randomised and do not switch on scene change.
• Improved the look of the new main menu.

• Energy regeneration and endurance regeneration from the legacy tree (Tree of Light) have been increased to +15% (was 5%).

With update 0.6.1.5 we are doing massive balancing changes to the regeneration system along performance and further improvements. With those balance changes we are also also kicking off a new season EA-public-season-4! We wish everyone a lot of fun in the new season. If you encounter any bugs please let us know.

Performance Improvements

• Added new projectile cluster system which batches a bunch of projectiles together to trigger on hit effects. This will improve performance drastically since less collisions have to be calculated. Instead of creating 5 damage areas of nearby projectiles we cluster them and only create one damage filed with 5 times the damage of the single area. The projectile clustering only gets activated if there are a decent amount of projectiles on each attack so that it can be assumed that a whole cluster would hit an enemy.
• Improved particle culling system which is now scaling the culling area with AoE size increase.

• You are now not performing an attack when talking to NPCs and progressing through the dialog.
• Improved performance for darkness projectiles.
• Exploding Skills now use a new particle system running on the GPU to improve performance.

• We are making huge changes to how regeneration works. Currently regeneration is stacking multiplicative which eventually grant near infinite regeneration of energy and endurance. We are changing this system to scale additive. To compensate we increased the base percentage of regeneration which will grant you more resource regeneration early on but with a steady instead of an exponential increase.
• Energy Regeneration now grants + 40% increased energy regeneration (was 20% before)
• Endurance Regeneration now grants +40% increased endurance regeneration (was 20% before)
• Dodge Regeneration now grants +40% increased doge regeneration (was 20% before)
• Projectiles on hit effects are now only triggered when you have a small distance to enemies to prevent shotgunning bosses (triggering all projectiles

• Fixed a bug which caused initial dodge regeneration to be much higher than it should be. (v.0-.6.1.5b)
• Fixed a bug which caused the gatekeeper portal to open even though the map mini boss was not defeated yet
• Frenzy mode timer will now remember the current + % EXP bonus after switching scenes
• Fixed the possibility to un-pause the game while not selected an unlocked skill or weapon

Update 0.6.1.4 adds a new soundtrack the gatekeeper fights. With this new soundtrack the Striving for Light offical soundtrack is reaching a length of over 51 minutes. And there will be more.

• Added new soundtrack for gatekeeper fights. Here is the new soundtrack "Gatekeeper". [previewyoutube=LOvWTwPnlgg;full][/previewyoutube]

• A further fix for death player loading bug on fresh save files. If you still encounter this bug please reach out to us and let us know.

Update 0.6.1.3 marks a milestone for the controller support for Striving for Light by adding a node navigation system for controller input on the skill tree and the pathfinder system. Also a lot of controller functionalities have been improved and reworked to make using a controller a much more enjoyable and time efficient option. We will now also head towards steam deck verification.

Controller Support

• Added a new node navigation system which makes it possible to jump between nodes in the skill tree or the pathfinder system by using the D-pad-buttons on your controller. Pressing right on the D-pad will move the cursor to the nearest node on the right side, moving the cursor down will move it to the nearest node below. This simplifies the cursor navigation and makes controller input on the skill tree/ pathfinder system much more time efficient. You can even use the new node navigation on your keyboard with the arrow keys.
  
• Focus locking has been added whenever you perform a certain action to keep active focus in place. For example when placing a skill gem from the skill gem list moving the cursor with the right stick was as well moving the focus in the list which could accidentally swap out the current selected skill gem on placement. Focus is now locked and resumed once you have placed your skill gem or skill shard. Focus locking will also make using the pop up menu in the pathfinder system less confusing and much more enjoyable to use.
  
  

• Added scrolling option to the key rebind menu when using controller input.
• The skill gem window is now opened and closed by the controller button X which makes it possible to use the B button to cancel an active skill gem placement, which is a much more logical choice.
• Deactivating and activating a skill node is now done by button B as well.
• Using the virtual keyboard on controller input will now also lock the cursor in place while typing.

• Fixed health points of ravaging companions

• Frenzy mode now scales until a max remaining time of 1s (was 0.5s before). Also initial exp gains are increased slightly. The amount needed to trigger frenzy mode on higher dungeon floors has been lowered slightly.

• Fixed fog of war reset for the map after entering a gatekeeper portal.
• Fixed first player spawn with 0 health after character selection also on existing save files.

• Player movement is now more responsive.
• Swamp bug bullets now have a glow effect for increased visibility on dark backgrounds

• [Skill] Meteor: Meteor damage increased to 30 (was 20). Meteor now hits a random area in attack direction making possible to aim which area the meteor will hit. This should make the meteor skills much more usable. Improved meteor SFX.

• Fixed a bug which caused certain skills (mainly meteor) to only damage enemies once
• Fixed a crash related to the character selection on loading save files
• Fixed respawning objects after scene switch in gatekeeper arenas
• Fixed a bug from last update 0.6.1.2 which sets your health to 3 hearts after switching a scene
• Fixed a bug which caused additional hearts from the leagcy progression system not being applied initially

Controller Support

• Added a new radial selection menu which makes it possible to open the skilltree and the pathfinder with the same select button on your controllers.
  
• Added functionality to attack at all angles with the right stick on the controller. You can still use the A/X/Y/B buttons for attacking in fixed angles.
  

• Now new maps only can red modifiers by default. If you also add new modifiers now also never a green weaken or empower modifier will be added. Those green modifiers can now only be added additionally.
• Improved frenzy mode. Now the frenzy mode is harder to activate the deeper you dive into the dungeon floors. Also a new time scaling algorithm has been implemented to shorten the remaining time based on the amount of already defeated enemies in the frenzy mode. Overall the exp bonus has been lowered to compensate the new time scaling algorithm.
• Improved map modifier shard highlighting. Now only those map modifier shards are highlighted that can actually be applied to a map.

• Changed the drop chance distribution between the map shards.

• Fixed a bug which lead to crashes after character selection (v.0.6.1.2a)
• Fixed a bug which caused parts of old save files to be copied into new save files when switching to a new save file (v.0.6.1.2a)
• Fixed a recursion with the new controller inputs preventing minimap to open and close (v.0.6.1.2a)
• Fixed a bug which caused the pathfinder map to open in menu on controller input. Fixed a bug which caused piercing blow to fly in random directions. Fixed wrong displayed keybindings for opening the pathfinder on the displayed ground tutorial on the first dungeon floors
• Fixed respawning of captured hearts in various gatekeeper arenas.
• Fixed a crash related to the character selection save data.

New Town

New interaction system

Save System Rework

• Items which are dropped in town are now saved and can be picked up also after switching to the skill tree or leaving through the town portal. Once your run is over also the town instance will be reset.
• Increased the size of the merchant trade UI.

• [Condition Damage] Fixed a bug which caused conditions on stacked skills not being applied equal to the amount of skill stacks.
• Fixed a bug which prevented the gatekeeper exit doorways on the cave map from opening after the fight is completed.
• Fixed type for pheonix staff.

• Visually reworked dialog indicator for NPCs to improve visibility of dialog options.
  
• NPCs now only show the dialog indicator when there are new possible interactions for the NPC. Smith and Librarian will now only show the glowing dialog indicator when you have enough fragments of light to actually unlock new weapons or skills. The dialog indicator for the old man is now only glowing when you have to talk to him to unlock new dungeon levels.

• Improved female player animation.

• [Skill Node] Increased melee damage: Increases melee damage by 15 (was 10).
• [Skill Node] Increased melee damage: Spawn possibility in the skill tree has been increased to make up for more range options to increase projectile damage.

• Dialog indicator now only appears when there are new possible interactions.
• Fixed text overflow in stats window for spanish translation.
• Fixed a bug which made it possible to skip dungeon levels after a gatekeeper fight when returning to town before entering the activated portal.
• Fixed a bug which caused captured heart at cave gatekeeper fight to respawn.
• Fixed a bug which made it possible to return to the gatekeeper arena and fight the gatekeeper a second time.
• Fixed gatekeeper barriers not opening when dungeon level already has been unlocked from previous runs.

Balancing:

• Changed placement for captured hearts and spider eggs in gatekeeper arena to prevent them being hitable from outside the arena.
• First serpent gatekeeper forms of void map now have reduced health in endgame similar to the scaling in the early game.
• Faded maps now have 15 % increased EXP bonus (was 10%), additionally they also have 10% increased enemy health and 5 % more enemy spawns.

Improvements

• Reduced deceleration of map tree shards when dropping from enemies

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug which caused weaken and empower modifier to cancel out the effect on map mods in an unintended way. If you now apply very much weaken mulipliers on a map to reduce the effects of other mods you can end up receiving negative EXP bonuses. This prevents canceling out mods by throwing massive amounts of weaken modifiers onto a map.
• Fixed unlocked maps not being spawned in the initial pathfinder maps.
• Fixed gatekeeper arena colliders making player getting stuck while walking around the closed exit door areas.
• Fixed merchant not offering skill tree shards
• Fixed text out of bounds for weapon tooltips
• Fixed a bug which caused no further maps to be connected to your pathfinder map

Update 0.6.1.0c brings an improved chinese translation as well as in game credits to Striving for Light. New Features:

• Credits have been added.

• Chinese translation has been improved. A special thanks to Starling for providing an improved chinese community translation.
• Added support for chinese letters in the leaderboard entries for non-chinese language settings.
• Updated game stats window UI for improved chinese language support
• Added shader functionality for screen sampling

• Fixed missing font on leaderboard UI elements for chinese language setting

Improvements

• Added tutorial hint for the pathfinder for first map activation
• New maps are now unlocked after defeating the gatekeeper at floor 5 (was floor 6 before)
• Weapon tooltips now have a 1/s suffix for better explaining the attack speed rating

Balancing:

• Incereased sting weapon damage to 12 (was 10)
• Incereased spear weapon damage to 14 (was 10)
• Incereased sword of the phoenix weapon damage to 11 (was 10)
• Increased detection range for corrupted light void map boss
• Slightly reduced enemy amount scaling on endgame maps

Bugfixes:

• Fixed a crash which could occur when loading a save game
• Fixed infinite damage scaling of enemy projectiles when map modifiers are active
• Fixed translations for various map shards
• Fixed melee weapon tooltips displaying wrong damage numbers
• Fixed a bug which caused multiple damage instances being applied to the player when walking into multiple overlapping snail trails.

[previewyoutube=bXIYEPV9iWk;full][/previewyoutube]
Welcome wanderer, with the pathfinder content update (Version 0.6.1) we are releasing a massive new map progression system which will not only make the endgame much more diverse and challenging but also give you the possiblity to shape the early game maps to your liking. This update is furthermore packed with a big amount of major improvements like a reworked frenzy exp bonus or extended functionality for the shard of refund and long awaited features like a character selection.

Pathfinder map progression system

Upated map environments, enemies and effects

Character selection

Frenzy Experience Bonus

Improved skill tooltips

Shard of Refund

• Damage numbers have been uniformly multiplied by 10 to give us more flexibility in designing weapons. For various current weapons damage numbers have been adjusted to fill the gap between the 1 and 2 damage weapons (now 10 and 20 damage weapons). Enemy health has been adjusted accordingly. This change was also required to support small map modifiers.
• Experience values have been multiplied by 100 to support small map modifiers and small frenzy exp bonuses.
• The resource regeneration system has been overhauled to remove the current cap of 1 resource per frame and make regeneration frame rate independent.
• Hearts now have a unique drop pool to improve consistency of heart drops
• With the pathfinder update we are upgrading our enemy scaling system so that enemy health pools scale with the map you are currently playing. So you could start your run with the forest map or the swamps if you want to.
• Improved glaring light visual effect
• Improved visibility of traps for the forest map. They now have a red glow to make them stand out a bit more.
• The layout of the gatekeeper arenas has been improved to follow easier logic. You now enter the area on the left side and leave it on the right side.
• Shard of Change could in rare cases roll the same skill which already existed on the skill node it was applied to. The shard will now never roll the same skill node present on the node it was applied to.

• Changed cost for skill tree shards for the merchant
• Reworked enemy health scaling system
• Adjusted drop chances for skill tree shards to compensate for the new added

• Fixed missing drop sfx for skill shards from world objects
• Fixed blocking edge in the gatekeeper arena collider which made it possible to collide with the border when walking near the east border
• Fixed bursting companions being not removed from the world when switching scenes, which could result in duplicated bursting companions.

Welcome wanderer. With the "Legacy" content update released just a few weeks ago Striving for Light has seen the biggest update until now and we are already working on the next massive content udpate. So with this post we will reveil some of the new features and improvements coming to Striving for Light with the next Not-So-Far-Away-Content-Update. The next content udpate is named after the new introduced endgame system "Pathfinder". In this post we will give a deeper insight in what you can expect from this new endgame system and how it actually works. Please note that all presented information is subject to change as we are in active development. Numbers and artworks are not final.

Overview

Maps

Map Modifiers

Map Shards

Endgame & Early Game

• With the pathfinder update we are upgrading our enemy scaling system so that enemy health pools scale with the map you are currently playing. So you could start your run with the forest map or the swamps if you want to.
• The frenzy experience bonus will be reworked since the experience bonus turned out to be the dominating mechanic to gain insane bonuses and trivialising game difficulty in the endgame. The frenzy bonus will get harder and harder to maintain the higher your bonus rises.
• The resource regeneration system will be overhauled to remove the current cap of 1 resource per frame and make regeneration frame rate independent.
• Enemy AoE effects receive a visual overhaul making borders much clearer to see.
• All older map environments will be visually reworked.

Update 0.6.0.4 brings an improved map generation algorithm, further projectile performance improvements, reworked freeze conditions and even more tweaks and improvements to Striving for Light.

Improved Projectile Performance

Improved Map Generation Algorithm

Freeze Condition Rework

Further improvements

• Improved the visual effects of the meteor skills. The falling meteor is now smaller and has a reworked fade in effect to make it less distracting.
• Added SFX for emerald staff when summoning spiders.
• Reworked darkness projectile alternative visuals.
• Decreased SFX volume of meteor skills

• Fixed a bug with corrupted light map boss where it ended up not performing an attack.
• Fixed a bug with freeze conditions, which turned enemy AoE attacks invisible while they still remained active and were able to deal damage.

Update 0.6.0.3 brings some performance improvements to the rendering system and an improved responsiveness for the energy and endurance UI.

Performance Improvements

Improved responsiveness of energy & endurance UI

Further improvements

• The burning ground effect has been tweaked for improved performance
• Added the keybinding for opening the skill gem menu which is the key "G" on default. This key can also be changed in the key bindings menu.

• [Gatekeeper] Fixed a missplaced collider on the stone smasher projectiles
• [Gatekeeper] Fixed too low projectile range of iron frost

WIth Update 0.6.0.2 a new shard of conjunction range preview was added to display the acting range also improvements to the trade UI were made. Last but not least the most critical current crash related to the skill gem event should be fixed now.

Shard of Conjunction Connection Preview

Improved merchant trade UI

Further improvements

• Initial game volume has been lowered on first game start (v0.6.0.2b)

• The crash when receiving a skill gem reward from the darkness challenge map event sould finally been fixed now.
• Fixed a bug which caused you to be locked out of the endboss arena.
• Controller input to open stats and skillgems menu is now received from all input devices (was only device 0 before) (v0.6.0.2a)
• Fixed a bug which caused issues with the key rebinds (v0.6.0.2b)

Update 0.6.0.1 brings a variety of improvements & bugfixes to the Legacy content update based on various feedback.

• Added new skill tree icons for basic endurance and energy skill nodes. All basic skill nodes now have a unique icon to make them easier readable when taking color blindness into account.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Some skill tree icons how have improved contrast to make them better readable on smaller scale.
• Now only one skill tree tutorial is shown at a time also preventing gamepad users to be locked out and use the mouse to close a tutorial window.
• Game is now paused on Merchant Trade
• Merchant Trade UI now also has tooltips when navigating with gamepad
• The librarian and smith dialogs are now updated directly after talking to the npcs and not only after switching scenes. Before you had to talk to each npc and return to town to trigger the unlock dialog, you can now do this direcly when talking to them for the first time.
• You can now re-interact with the Tree of Light and Leaderboard Stone after closing the pop up windows without needing to re-trigger the interaction button.
• The play online tutorial now also displays the information which season is the current one
• Added the possibility to only sacrifice one light to the Tree of Light.

• Fixed a crash which could occur when finishing the darkness (skill gem) event on the map (v0.6.0.1b)
• Fixed a typo in the play public notification in the main menu.
• Fixes a bug which caused bursting companions to not die on enemy contact.
• Fixed scaling issue of play online tutorial UI in main menu.
• Active Dialog now deactivates the game zoom function
• Fixed piercing projectiles not actually piercing.
• Fixed a crash when entering the hidden superboss area on mountains map.
• Fixed a bug which caused projectile range to not be permanently increased by skills.
• Fixed a bug which caused yout to end up on a map with chickens when returning to a map from the town portal. Now a new map is generated therefore. (v0.6.0.0d)
• Fixed wrong skill descrition on meteor skills (melee and range was switched) (v0.6.0.1b)
• Fixed wrong acceleration speed of Piercing Blow (v.0.6.0.1b)
• Fixed a bug which caused the frenzy exp bonus to remain active when switching to the menu (v0.6.0.1b)

[previewyoutube=bcOCiCxeYuU;full][/previewyoutube] The Legacy content update is our largest update for Striving for Light to date. The update features an extensive new meta progression system, 6 new challenging gatekeepers all with their own unique weapon drops, a map progression system along 3 new maps to explore filled with new enemies & bosses to hunt down. We are introducing new "Meteor" skills, some improvements to the controller support and requested chinese language support. With the Legacy content update the EA-Season 2 will start.

Legacy Progression System

Map progression system

New Maps

Mountains

Cave

Swamps

New soundtracks

New Gatekeepers

New Gatekeepers Weapons

New Skills

• Meteor Blow
  Your melee attacks have a 30% chance to cast a meteor to a random area in your surroundings. Dealing 2 damage and applying a knockback to enemies. Meteor size scales with your AoE size.
• Meteor Cast
  Your range attacks have a 50% chance to cast a meteor to a random area in your surroundings. Dealing 2 damage and applying a knockback to enemies. Meteor size scales with your AoE size.

Reworked Town Visuals

Chinese Language Support

Controller Support

• Endgame maps now have diverse background parallax effects like the themed maps in the early game
• When starting the game the save file from your last run will be loaded automatically. So no need to switch to online mode on each game start anymore.
• The ladders in the hidden super boss arena now also need a confirmation to leave the arena similar to the ladders to enter the arena
• New and improved player minimap icon
• Improved performance for the huge skill trees and projectiles
• Language selection does now use translated language names instead of only abbreviations

• Enemies now all have the same base HP for endgame scaling (enemies had their standard base HP which was used for endgame scaling)
• Adjusted gatekeeper exp and hp to allign them with new added gatekeepers

• Fixed a bug which caused the online mode tutorial window to pop up everytime
• Fixed lost focus on main menu when navigating with keyboard or gamepad
• Fixed copying save state into new online league save file
• Fixed missplaced light occluder of tutorial spider boss
• Fixed layer issue for the gatekeeper ancient tree
• Fixed an issue which did not update the tutorials according to the current input type for gamepads

The release of the upcoming major content update Legacy (Version 0.6) is just around the corner. To celebrate the release we have come up with an event for streamers and their communities. Streamers and their Communities will compete for the top ranks on the leaderboard! Event Start and Duration Event starts with the Release of the Legacy content update and lasts for 1 week. 7. - 14. August starting and ending at 7pm CEST If you are not a streamer... Invite your favourite streamer to participate in the challenge! Official announcement on our website: https://www.strivingforlight.com/streamer-challenge/ How to participate [olist]

We are sharing a forecast for the massive upcoming update 0.6 and the further game development. Let us know your thoughts and ideas!
Join our Discord!

With update 0.5.3.3 we are kicking off the early access public league season 1. This update brings a variety of highly requested improvements, balancing changes and bugfixes. The well tested online mode is now getting increased visibility by a dedicated tutorial window introducing players to the online functionalities.How long would you wish a league season should be until the next one starts?

• Public League Season 1 has started. Enter the new season from the main menu.
• Added captured hearts for various gatekeeper boss fights.
  
• [Skill] Charge: Charge now scales the size of summoned pets like the spider companions from the emerald staff.
  
• Added a tutorial window in the main menu to introduce players to the online mode.
• Added a new setting in the options menu which lets you automatically pause the game when the game window loses focus (This seemed to cause some OBS capturing issues before, let us know if those issues still occur)

• Added [Stackable] tag to ability skill tooltips to display stackability
• Fixed cut off numbers in stats window for regeneration stats
• The skill gem event reward window now has a 1 second delay until a reward can be chosen to prevent accidental picks
• Improved projectile scattering angles for all scatter skills so that projectiles don't overlap (0.5.3.3a)

• Condition stacks now only get halved between damage intervals instead reset back to 1 stack. This should help upkeeping a higher amount of condition damage when mainly playing condition builds. (0.5.3.3b)
• Increased enemy Hp scaling to compensate for gained exp frenzy bonus
• Frenzy mode exp bonus does now scale slower the higher it gets

• Fixed crash when picking up two weapons at once
• Fixed crash when using emerald stuff to summon spider companions with charge range attack modifier active
• Fixed not refreshed tooltips when using shard of change on a skill node multiple times
• Fixed gatekeeper portal in endless maps switching to normal portal in certain cases
• Fixed a bug which caused melee scattering sweep and scattering hit to interact with each other and wrongly prevent a skill effect from being spawned (0.5.3.3a)
• Fixed a bug which caused duplicated save games when entering a new league (0.5.3.3a)
• Fixed double hit not scaling when multiple double hits are active (0.5.3.3b)

With update 0.5.3.2 we are adding a bunch of highly requested QoL improvements to Striving for Light. The update brings, a new game camera zoom function, mouse button support for key rebinds, improved dodge and player hit feedback.

• Added in game zoom function. You can now use the mouse wheel to zoom the game camera in and out. Its also possible to rebind thes zooming keys in the key rebind menu.
  
• Added tutorial for using skill shards. When you first collect a shard you will see a tutorial window in the skilltree explaining where to access them and how to use them.
• Added a tutorial window in the main menu to introduce players to the online mode (0.5.3.2a)

• Improved dodge acceleration to make the dodge overall feel more responsive
• Improved dodge VFX to make the dodge more responsive
  
• You can now rebind keys to mouse buttons
• Frenzy timer is now paused when entering the skilltree (0.5.3.2a)
• Increased player hit VFX size for improved player hit feedback
• Increased base player movement speed to 320 (was 300)

• Fixed inconsitent spawn and animation interruption of Bleeding Swirl and Bleeding Blade skills

Improvements

• Improved loading sequence when changing scenes. Which should result in a more fluid transition between scenes.
• Improved collider on bleak worm gatekeeper boss

Bugfixes

• Fixed missing projectile modifiers from boss projectiles leading to only straight projectile trajectories.

Update 0.5.3.1brings a new frenzy mode to Striving for Light which will reward defeating enemies in a streak with bonus experience.

Frenzy Mode

• Increased range of lightning projectiles to 600 (was 500)

• Fixed missing projectiles for ice bird boss

This hotfix fixes reported issues and some regressions from the new added pooling and skill stacking systems for performence improvements. Bugfixes:

• Fixed crash on using bursting wield and bursting shot
• Fixed spread of skills which scatter projectiles
• Fixed duplicated projectiles on skills which scatter projectiles
• Fixed a bug which caused wrong number of projectiles being spawned on skills which scatter projectiles
• Fixed a bug which caused skill that create scattering projectiles to not spawn at all
• Fixed shadow on fireball projectiles
• Fixed shadow on enemy fire projectiles
• Fixed corrupted boss on void map not shooting projectiles
• Fixed ice trap not shooting projectiles
• Fixed bug boss not shooting projectiles
• Fixed ghost boss not shooting projectiles
• Fixed resetting of projectile trails for new pooling system

Update 0.5.3.0 is all about performance improvements. To make it short for everyone who is not interested in technical details: Yes the game has now substantially improved performance, especially noticeable in the endgame. It should make the game feel more responsive in general. Here is a showcase on how substantial the performance improvements are: [previewyoutube=R2K-Bwl-BI0;full][/previewyoutube] Now here are the details. With the update comes a lot of under the hood changes which required a substantial part of the code-base to be rewritten. This was a lengthy process which was already prepared many updates before. As always we do a lot of testing but there might be some more crashes or bugs due to the substantial code-base changes. If you encounter any issue please let us know we are looking forward to fix them as soon as possible.
[Tech] Skill Batching: Skills are now batched which leads to a substantial performance increase. Furthermore damage and attributes are now also packed into one skill effect instead of multiple ones. This also keeps the screen much more readable by reducing the amount of active skill effects. [Tech] Pooling: Objects are now pooled which improves performance on builds with huge amounts of projectiles and skill effects.

• New fire fields of phoenix and corrupted enemies on void map to substantially improve performance especially on low end GPUs.
• Improved projectile spread on scattering skills.
• Improved shadows of bleeding blade / bleeding swirl skill to prevent them covering a lot of the screen on increased area of effect size.
• Improved glaring light effect culling to only display one effect at the time. This also leads to a substantial performance increase when multiple glaring light effects are active.

• Flattened enemy HP scaling curve and reduced exponential scaling slightly. The enemy HP scaling curve now sits in between the old and the recently introduced new scaling curve with a more flattened start on endgame.
• Reduced gatekeeper HP of bleak worm and ancient tree to 100 (was 120)

• Fixed a bug which caused Ancient Tree to never spawn in endgame gatekeeper arenas
• Plenty smaller bugfixes

Enemy HP bars

• Fixed collider of gatekeepter arena which could get the player character stuck when walking along the arena borders
• Fixed some shadow issues on projectiles

New Skills

New Weapon

New leaderboard public season

• Improved gamepad support for league window and leaderboard scroll list (0.5.2.3a)
• Leaderboard ranking list is now automatically scrolling to your current position (0.5.2.3a)
• Reworked hammer and elder club attack animations (0.5.2.3a)
• Improved shard of conjunction: The shard now connects a lot more possible sorrounding skill nodes (0.5.2.3b)
• Added shadows to projectiles to make them stand out better independent on map background.
• New enemy endgame scaling system with increased HP scaling on very deep floor levels