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:

The current tutorial got completely redesigned. The old tutorial was actually around 2 years old. And even though the complexity of your game increased the tutorial remained the same. We noticed that one of the most difficult tasks for new players is actually to get into the game and understanding the core gameplay mechanics. It is easy to overread one of the vast amount of tutorial hints and then get stuck because information is missing. We want to take the tutorial to the next level with this update and improve the way how core concepts are communicated step by step instead of throwing a wall of text at new players and expect them to not miss any information. Finally legendary trinkets and how to use those abilities will be explained directly from the start. Thanks for all your feedback.

Improved Softcore Mode:

If you get defeated during an bossfight in softcore mode you will now now let you continue with the exact same boss HP without the boss regenerating shields and HP. All shattered shields will stay shattered (bosses did regenerate to 75% health again and gain back their 3 shields.

Improved Crafting:

Plenty of minor tweaks and changes have been made to the shard of power that lets you re-roll the base weapon damage. You can look forward to higher base weapon damage rolls. The crafting chances have also been reworked to compensate for these higher possible damage rolls. The inconsistencies of higher weapon damage rolls on legendary upgrade compared to upgrading base weapon damage with shard of power are now a thing of the past.

Improved Difficulty Tiers:

You will now gain global +25% increased drop rates on everything for each difficulty tier. Difficulty Tier 5 will therefore grant you with a staggering global +100% increase in all drop rates, doubling all of your active positive map modifiers. These droprates will multiplicative scale with all your map modifiers. The map tooltips will take the difficulty tier directly into account and display the multiplied drop rates when you hover over the map. Next to the increased drop rates difficulty tiers will increase elite spawn rates which will increase your EXP gain and the amount of dropped light fragments. An explanation about elite enemies was added to the tooltips to give more insight what the difficulty tiers will grant you. New tooltips have also been added to the in game difficulty tier icon on top right. As we see difficulty tiers as nothing we want to force players into and was initially added for another layer of challenge for players which have already achieved everything they wanted in tier 1 of the current season and search for a new challenge. Higher difficulty tiers will require very optimised builds and a lot of currency investment to deal with the increased challenge. We therefore hope that the increased drop rates will be a big enough carrot for those players willing to take on this additional challenge.

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