We have been working hard to formally add controller support and Steam Deck support for Bowmen. This game update includes many major changes to the game and UI that adds controller and Steam Deck support, however, there are still a few game bugs and kinks that need to be ironed out over the next few weeks. If you run into issues with this build, please let us know on the official Bowmen forums or here on Steam. Bugs will continue to be removed through minor patches as we find them. Once we feel we have ironed out all the bugs on the Deck, we will have the game reviewed by Valve so it can be Deck verified and provide another update. Until then, note that you may run into issues while playing on a Steam Deck. What's New?: Release Candidate (RC) 0.2.0 from 0.1.6.5

Major Game/Gameplay Changes

• Game versions have been simplified to indicate that the game is still in early access, starting with a 0 instead of a 1. References to old patches have been updated accordingly.
• The base damage reduction for magic guarding when hit by a projectile is increased from 50% to 60%.
• Charging an arrow shot now has a bit of resistance to it. Shots with more power will require you to hold down the mouse (or A button) for longer.
• Rumble effects have been added to the game when the player uses the melee slash or or charges their arrow shot.
• The camera now has a depth of field effect added to it.

GUI Changes

• Menu buttons have been modified, and the menu screens have been redesigned.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where the game would not close properly upon exit on the Steam Deck.
• Fixed an issue where the Skeleton Mage would not call his death animation when killed.
• Fixed an issue where you couldn't add stat points using the controller.
• Fixed an issue moving from stat points to items on the hero information screen with the controller.
• Fixed an issue where they bear cub would move positions under certain circumstances.

We have been working hard to formally add controller support and Steam Deck support for Bowmen. This game update includes many major changes to the game and UI that adds controller and Steam Deck support, however, there are still a few game bugs and kinks that need to be ironed out over the next few weeks. If you run into issues with this build, please let us know on the official Bowmen forums or here on Steam. Bugs will continue to be removed through minor patches as we find them. Once we feel we have ironed out all the bugs on the Deck, we will have the game reviewed by Valve so it can be Deck verified and provide another update. Until then, note that you may run into issues while playing on a Steam Deck. What's New?: Release Candidate (RC) v1.06.5 from v1.06.4

Major Game/Gameplay Changes

• Controller support has been added to the game! In the coming months we will be testing various different controller types and Bowmen on the Steam Deck. Steam Deck support is currently limited, but we hope to iron out any remaining bugs before the winter quarter 2022/2023.
• Critical hits and melee attacks will now display damage numbers with a little sparkle animation to give it more flair.
• A magic guard ability has been added to the game, which can be activated with the D key or the left bumper. Magic guarding will reduce damage you receive from projectiles and is dependent upon how much fortitude your character has.
• A woodlands bear has been added to the game, which will periodically jump out of the forest to help you and attack enemies.
• The loading bar now has an outline design to make it pop a little more.
• Bombs from Skeleton Knight enemies now substantially increase their damage to the player if not detonated at a safe distance. This damage increase is more substantial on higher difficulties. In addition, other enemies receive less damage from bombs on higher difficulties.
• The Skeleton Mage now spawns on earlier waves if the player is playing on Hell or Inferno difficulty. Spawns are the same for lower difficulties.
• Projectile damage from the Fel Bats has been increased as a function of difficulty. Their accuracy is reduced on lower difficulties, and increased on higher difficulties.
• Gold has been added to the game, which can be used to purchase skins. Players accumulate gold for each minion they kill.
• A "low health" animation has been added to the game that plays when your character is below 10% of their maximum health.
• A few new sound effects have been added to the game, such as an equip sound effect when the player's skin is changed in the menu.

Item Changes

• The Battleaxe of Kings has been added to the game, which gives your melee slashes life steal.

GUI Changes

• Equip and activation icons have been added to items that drop or are visible within your toolbar.
• Game icons will automatically swap from keyboard to gamepad if a controller is detected by the game engine.
• The GUI Icons on Onslaught have been increased in size so that they are more easily visible on the Steam Deck.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue whereby the text showing the remaining time on the Mark of the Barbarian would not be positioned properly if the player also had a Spirit Golem and Piece of Balrog Heart active.
• Fixed an issue where damage would affect the player but sometimes not display the damage text if the player's health was low.
• Fixed an issue where Akash would sometimes not spawn the Wizard under very rare circumstances.
• Fixed a bug where the player could pause during the death animation.

Since the earliest days of Bowmen's development and consistently throughout its existence, I've largely gotten two major pieces of feedback from players: 1. The game would probably succeed best on a mobile device platform (such as iOS). 2. The game would greatly benefit from full controller support, in addition to support for a mouse and keyboard. The second piece of advice I also received from Valve, since a large portion of PC gamers also own a controller and use it regularly for playing games. However, initially I wanted to stick to a mouse and keyboard for a few reasons: First, the original game concept design was to be that of old school PC games like the ones I played back in the day, such as Gunbound, Warcraft, and Diablo. For a lot of these games, they had a chat feature upon the initial game menu that allowed you to talk with other players that were currently in game, which I greatly enjoyed. This was implemented for Bowmen after months of development, but I wasn't quite sure how to morph this function to be useable on a controller (which, to be honest, I am still working on). Second, these types of games often utilize "mouse over" tooltips, which was also problematic for a controller (I could make a "gamepad" version of the menus, where the tooltips are stationary, but it would take a lot of code rewriting and a UI overhaul). Lastly, all of these features would need to be reworked again for iOS touch controls, and porting the game to something like the Nintendo Switch or an iPad would cause me to lose all access to the Steam platform for those ports, which my ranking system for Bowmen heavily depended on.

Cue the Steam Deck

What's New?: Release Candidate (RC) v1.06.04 from v1.05.40

Major Game/Gameplay Changes

• The Unity Engine has been updated and the game library rebuilt. As a whole, this has led to a huge increase in game performance. We also made several changes to game art assets, which should further improve game performance and reduce hard disk size.
• The character creation screen has been removed from the game. This was for the most part a relic from when the game did not use Steam IDs or Steamworks. New characters will automatically be assigned your Steam ID as their name, and you will only be prompted to view and accept the EULA via the Steam client in the future.
• In the options menu, a checkbox has been added for voices, rather than it being mixed with the SFX slider. In game voices will now be togglable.
• The player level cap has been raised from 40 to 50.
• Ranged enemy health and projectile damage have been buffed on every difficulty, while other minion healths and damage have remained the same. This is to make gameplay a little more challenging without making every enemy more difficult.
• Critical hit damage text now has additional effects associated with it (both visually and acoustically), to give it a bit more flair.
• The camera now has a rain effect on the lens. Rain effects in the onslaught scene have also been increased.
• A slight depth of field effect has been added to the camera.
• Hell and Inferno difficulties are now no longer locked by default. At the start of the game, you may select any difficulty you like.
• The chat client no longer reports when players join/leave the channel, or scores when returning. The chat client will, however, still report high scores achieved to the chat channel.
• A few of the game's audio tracks have changed.
• The "orb" that allows you to adjust and angle your shots has slightly changed. It is now a little more transparent.
• The arrow placeholder and arrows fired by the player now match the skin chosen, rather than the default "red steel" arrow.

Item Changes

• The damage of the Spirit Golem that this item summons has been increased to 102-145.

GUI Changes

• The GUI system has been restructured, using Unity 2021's latest system. This has led to massive improvements to performance.
• The wind arrow now has a little rotation animation associated with it.
• The chat window is now scrollable on the difficulty selection screen.

Achievement Changes

• The Hell achievement is now unlocked after receiving a high score on hell difficulty, rather than a high score on hard.
• The Inferno achievement is now unlocked after receiving a high score on inferno difficulty, rather than a high score on hard.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where players could deal damage to themselves twice if they hit themselves with an arrow.
• Fixed an issue where the reported "angle" of the player's shot was rounding incorrectly. It now should properly report 0 to 90, or 0 to -90 (depending upon the direction).
• Fixed a display issue with word bubbles from the summonable wizard and barbarian. They should now spawn with the word bubbles the correct size.
• Fixed a lighting issue that would occur on low graphics settings in certain scenes.
• Fixed an issue where vsync would automatically disable on lower graphical settings, even if it was enabled in the game options.
• Fixed a fading issue between scenes.

Hello everyone, Brokenshield here. We've been hard at work on Bowmen this summer/fall, but most of that work has been largely invisible. We had noticed at the start of the summer the game's cheat detection system was lacking in a lot of areas, and so we decided to overhaul that system and implement a new one. With the most recent update this October, this system is now live. The game will scan itself for changes and attempts at hacking / manipulating the leaderboards, and will send a report to us (as well as close the game) if there is any detection of cheating (note: the game does not monitor the rest of your system, nor does it collect any data whatsoever about anything outside of the game itself). We implemented this to hopefully maintain the integrity of the leaderboards, and keep your hard earned scores where they should be: at the top! If you notice any issues with the latest version of the game while you are playing, please let us know in the support forum on our main website or here on Steam. Because a lot of this work was on the back end focusing on game integrity, we haven't made too many changes to Bowmen's gameplay itself. Over the next few months, we are going to shift gears back to gameplay tweaks, focusing on marketing and getting the game's name out there, while also listening to feedback as it rolls in. While you play the game, consider how the game feels and plays and provide us with feedback on our forums or here on Steam. We appreciate any and all feedback you can give us: even if you think it is a minor tweak or game suggestion, as this feedback makes the game more fun and enjoyable for all players. Anyways, I look forward to what we will be doing and bringing to you in the coming months. Perhaps even a Christmas event is in order! Stay tuned! Thanks, The Ethereal Gem Bowmen Team

What's New?: Release Candidate (RC) v1.05.4 from v1.05.3

Major Game/Gameplay Changes

• We've added a more extensive cheat detection system to prevent hacking and leaderboard manipulation.
• A text warning and error sound effect will now trigger if you attempt to use the Melee Slash ability, but do not have enough strength or mana to do so.
• The level cap has been reduced to 40 (down from 60).

What's New?: Release Candidate (RC) v1.05.3 from v1.05

Major Game/Gameplay Changes

• The window for which the Melee Slash ability can hit targets has been tightened. This was to avoid some enemies appearing to get hit by the slash after the animation has finished.
• The window for which the summoned Sword of Justice can hurt enemies has been tightened. This was to avoid some enemies appearing to get hit by the sword after it despawned.
• A "death animation" sequence has been added, where the camera will rotate around the player during death before fading to the summary screen.
• The usable item Akash now drops more frequently than other items.
• Some audio has been reworked to be more clear.
• Early waves will no longer drop epic/legendary quality items. These will drop later on during the encounter to match the wave difficulty.
• The damage from bombs and the summonable Wizard's "Genesis" attack have been reduced.
• Lord Pain is now immune to certain effects, like the bleed effect associated with Bloodlust.

Item Changes

• This item now costs 120 HP to activate instead of mana per second. In addition, this item will remain active for 45 seconds as long as it is equipped.
• This item now has camera shake and other effects that play upon its activation.

• The proc chance has been increased to 33% (up from 30%).

• The damage of the fire summoned by this item has been reduced to 15-35.
• The fire summoned by this item now has a sound effect associated with it.

Skin Changes

• This skin now requires the rank of Ranger or better during season of the phoenix to unlock.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where the effect of Bloodlust was not occurring as often as indicated on the tooltip.
• Fixed various GUI issues that were known to occur on the Mac version of the game when keys were pressed or held down.
• Fixed an issue where the GUI elements would be improperly aligned on Mac clients, when the game did not save your resolution of choice properly from the last play session.
• Fixed an issue where some of the buff icons were improperly aligning to the top left of the screen under certain circumstances.
• Fixed an issue where enemy projectiles could, on occasion, "double" hit.
• Fixed an issue where the ghost ship from the Captain's Mace could be summoned while the 2 second pickup cooldown was in effect.
• Fixed an issue where sometimes the power of your shot would not reset to 0 after using the Multishot ability.
• Fixed an issue where you could sometimes "double shoot" by holding down both the left mouse button and the space bar, and releasing them at the same time.

What's New?: Release Candidate (RC) v1.05 from v1.04

Major Game/Gameplay Changes

• Steam saves are now being sorted by Steam user, rather than by computer. This allows for multiple Steam users to play Bowmen on the same machine, while keeping their game data separately stored. If this update causes issues with your game data, download it from the Steam cloud when prompted upon startup. We will also be offering support on the Steam forums to help recover your game data if you have issues with this update.
• The level cap has been reduced to 60 (down from 100).
• A Melee Slash ability has been added to the game, that allows you to finish off enemies quickly in front of you with a cone slash attack. The ability is unlocked after investing 8 stat points into Strength.
• Enemy health, movement speed, and damage (with the exception of bosses) have been increased across all difficulties.
• The health of the Infernal Balrog has been reduced across all difficulties.
• The cooldown on the Multishot ability has been increased.
• An additional shooting animation has been added to the Multishot ability to give it more flair.
• The cooldown on the Fire Arrows ability has been reduced. In addition, the single target damage from the Fire Arrows has been increased.
• The "terms of service" is no longer shown before creating a character, since it is now being handled through a Steam EULA (End-User License Agreement).
• The time interval between spawns of the Skeleton Knight have been increased. They now only spawn once every 5 waves.
• The damage of the Skeleton Mage's ranged attack has been increased.
• There is now an animation that plays when you upgrade the Multishot ability or unlock the Melee Slash.
• A notice about how Steam saves are handled has been added to the start screen.
• Two new background music tracks have been added to the game for a little more variety.

Item Changes

• Both the passive and active health regeneration amount of this item has been reduced.
• Both the passive and active regenerate rate of this item (ticks per second) has been reduced.

• The amount of spirit the item gives has been reduced to +14 (down from 26), but it now also reduces the cooldown on the Multishot by 8 seconds.

• The additional ice damage per hit has been increased to 15-22 (up from 8-16).

• The cleave damage has been reduced to 50% and 25% (down from 75% and 25%).
• The amount of strength the item gives has been reduced to +8 (down from 12).

Skin Changes

• The Chief Bandit skin now unlocks with the Untouchable achievement.

GUI Changes

• Text has been added showing the time remaining on Mark of the Barbarian and the Spirit Golem when they are active.
• Key text in item tooltips (such as item damage or cooldown reductions) are now in yellow text, to help them stand out at a glance.

Achievement Changes

• This achievement now requires a score of 3,500 on inferno difficulty (down from 5,000) with the Captain's Mace equipped to unlock.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where the ice damage from Frosthowl was lower than stated in the tooltip.
• Fixed an issue where sometimes your previous onslaught performance would not post to the chat.
• The time interval for recognizing a kill as a Double Kill or Multikill has been increased. This was to fix an issue where sometimes double kills would not register, or a multikill would register as a double kill.
• Fixed an issue where Double Kill and Multikill text would sometimes disappear randomly if multiple kills were achieved in rapid succession.

Greetings fellow archers! We've been hard at work over here at Ethereal Gem trying to make Bowmen the best possible game it can be before we launch it, officially, to the rest of the world. Your feedback during the Early Access period is paramount to Bowmen's success, and we are very grateful to the few of you who have already provided us with some feedback, you know who you are. You make working on the game fresh and fun, and we get very excited when we implement a suggested change and send it out back to you for play testing. As you may know, the targeted release date that we had set for ourselves (May 3rd) was fast approaching. Based on the state of the game, feedback we've received, and some ideas we still wished to implement, we decided that it was best to keep the game in Early Access for a little while longer. For example, we noticed during our own internal play testing sessions that we would often angle our bow down and rapid fire at bat enemies that were getting too close to our player if we didn't finish them off at a distance. This takes away from firing at farther enemies, and makes the gameplay a little stale. To remedy this, we've been toying with a "melee" attack, whereby you can finish off any enemies close to the player with the shift key. This makes gameplay a little more complex and dynamic, and allows you to finish off enemies close to you with ease while still shooting at farther targets. So, there's still a lot more to do, and your feedback during this period is really what is making Bowmen shine. So while we were reluctant to postpone the "official" release of the game, keeping it in Early Access for the time being will be best for the game in the long run. Your continued support and feedback are very important to us. Thank YOU for all your hard work, playing the game, and helping us make Bowmen better. You rock! Sincerely, The Bowmen Team

What's New?: Release Candidate (RC) v1.04 from v1.03

Major Game/Gameplay Changes

• The level cap has been raised from 30 to 100.
• The damage of enemy projectiles has been increased across all difficulties.
• Some variability has been added to enemy accuracy, which means that they will miss more often than they did in previous builds.
• The movement speed of the skeleton knights has been increased dramatically and is difficulty dependent. These enemies were initially intended to be a fast and immediate threat to the player, requiring swift action to avoid death. Their slow movement speed wasn't cutting it, and so we increased it.
• The "kill counter" time window, that is, the time window for which enemies can be killed and contribute to a double kill, multikill, etc. has been increased. This was because some enemies could be killed relatively close to one another and it wouldn't register with the current settings.
• The timer "between waves" is now more variable, and increases with increasing wave. This is so there isn't a large gap of time in between waves in the beginning of onslaught, and no "overlapping" waves later on.
• Items that can be "activated" have a 2 second cool down when they are equipped before they can be used. This was to fix a bug in RC v1.03 (see "bug fixes" below).
• Due to encryption efforts, we have changed how often the game autosaves game data. This is to increase game performance over previous game versions.
• Bombs no longer spawn on the map in random locations. Instead, they are "carried" by the skeleton knights, and can be detonated by hitting them with a fire arrow. If the skeleton knight is not killed before it reaches the player, it will detonate to deal bomb damage to the player and any enemies in the vicinity.
• Animations have been added for player attacks and taking damage.
  • Note: Steam cloud saves in this build are currently still being saved by computer, rather than Steam account. We are looking for ways to backup data based on Steam user, so be careful if more than one Steam user uses your computer to play Bowmen. For more information, please see the Support forum.

Skin Changes

• The Panda skin has been added to the game, which unlocks for every Steam account that has purchased the game during Early Access. This skin will growl at enemies after receiving a double kill or higher during onslaught. Since this is an Early Access exclusive, this skin will be available for a limited time up until the game's official launch later this year.

Achievement Changes

• The achievement Infernal Balrog Slayer is now correctly being reported as being unlockable on Hell difficulty as well as Inferno.
• The level requirement for the achievement Blood Soaked has been increased to 30.
• The level requirement for the achievement Inside Good, Outside Bad has been increased to 50.

Bug Fixes

• We fixed an issue where some items could be picked up in an "activated" state. This meant that when they were turned off from the "activated" state, it in some cases readjusted the player's stats incorrectly. This issue was fixed by adding a short cooldown upon pickup to items that can be activated, and adjusting how items modify player stats.
• We fixed an issue where the chat rank (i.e. the rank that appears next to a user's name in Bowmen world chat) was not always updating correctly, especially when switching between Steam accounts.
• Steam cloud saves are now correctly being stored and updated on the Mac version of the game client.
• Fixed some minor GUI issues where you could spam the "back" button on some menus and re-trigger the fadeout repeatedly to another scene.
• Fixed a bug whereby Greybeard (the "Wizard") would not play his run animation after finishing the tutorial and moving out of view.

Greetings fellow archers! The time has come to execute order 66... no wait, that's... that's not right hold on... *(Ruffles through papers)* Ah-HA! Here it is! *(Ahem)* It is time to release Bowmen online through Steam Early Access! After many years of development, it is finally out and ready for the world at large to play it! As per our previous announcement, we had decided to delay the final launch of the game to March to allow for us to make a few more tweaks before publishing the game and pushing it to Steam. However, as we began to do this, we realized that there are a few features of Bowmen that likely cannot be tweaked through internal play testing alone. Some players may have invaluable feedback to give us that, had we left ourselves to our own devices, we would never know about. Perhaps some items are under-powered, perhaps some others are over-powered, or perhaps the game simply isn't fast paced enough. Perhaps our "hard" difficulty is too easy, and "inferno" is too difficult. Perhaps some enemy types are dynamic and fun to kill, while others are more mundane and in need of improvement. By releasing on Early Access ahead of schedule and allowing a few months of tweaks between now and the final release, we can address some of these concerns directly with the involvement of the players - of YOU - which will make Bowmen the best game it can be. Therefore, we have released the game on Steam Early Access, and pushed the final release date to May 3rd, 2021. We are very excited to share this moment with you all, it has been a long road and the journey will be a bit longer still. However, we are confident that we can build an awesome game, together, and produce and even BETTER Bowmen come this May with your help. The game will continuously be updated for any bugs we catch and will be worked on as you play it all the way up to the May launch. So if you decide to get Bowmen and help us out, please provide us with feedback or report any bugs you find either to the Steam forums or our official website. We will be regularly addressing these issues with updates over the coming months. Also, we have another update to share with you all within the coming weeks, but we will keep that under wraps for now until it is ready. Keep your eyes peeled on the Bowmen news and announcements! Thank you SO MUCH for checking out the game, and if you decide to get it, we hope it provides you with the same level of entertainment and joy as it did while we were making it. Sincerely, The Bowmen Team

What's New?: Release Candidate (RC) v1.03 from v1.02

Major Game/Gameplay Changes

• The way the game handles loading new scenes has been modified so that transitions should be smoother. This includes "minor" loading screens between menus.
• How Lord Pain spawns has been modified to ensure he does not spawn around an Infernal Balrog.
• The Forgotten skin now unlocks by achieving the Hunter rank or better during the Season of the Phoenix.
• The Ghost skin now unlocks by equipping every item in the game at least once.
• Some minions will no longer spawn if Lord Pain is active (i.e., aerial enemies and ranged enemies). This makes it a bit easier to kill enemies during the final boss fight because Lord Pain has such a large hitbox.

Achievement Changes

• The achievement Two Thousand has been added, which is awarded for reaching a score of 2,000 or better on inferno difficulty.
• The achievement Five Thousand has been added, which is awarded for reaching a score of 5,000 or better on inferno difficulty.
• The achievement Ten Thousand has been added, which is awarded for reaching a score of 10,000 or better on inferno difficulty.

Item Changes

• Hypermace
  • The spirit stat on this item has been increased to +26 (up from +8).
• Rico's Chet
  • The cleave damage now has a sound effect associated with it.
  • The cleave radius has been reduced from 10 to 6.
• Sword of a Perfect World
  • The stat bonuses on this item have all been increased to +4 (up from +3).
  • The EXP bonus on this item has been doubled to +20 EXP per kill (up from +10).
• Captain's Mace
  • The damage effect from the summoned ghost ship has been increased (142-208, up from 80-110).
• Masfury
  • Your arrows no longer have a 20% chance to generate flames, but instead, your missed fire arrows have a 100% chance to set the ground on fire. This change was made to help the weapon feel a little less variable.
  • Since the fire arrows have a long cooldown, we've increased the damage of the fire from Masfury substantially to 32-67 (up from 7-10).

Bug Fixes

• The fire effect from the item Masfury has been modified so that it properly aligns on the ground.
• The +EXP effect from Sword of a Perfect World is now correctly being calculated upon enemy death.
• Adjusted the Vol, Sword of Justice positioning so that it will spawn out of view if the camera is zoomed out.
• The summary screen no longer loads while your character is dead during Onslaught. This was to prevent a movement bug from occurring that we noticed during play testing.
• Fixed an issue where the "Aerial Mage" enemy would sometimes stop out of the field of view, making it difficult to target and kill.
• Fixed an issue whereby the player could be moved by game objects upon death. Also, we fixed a minor player positioning issue so that he aligns correctly with the ground now.

Hello fellow archers! Some of you may have noticed that we pushed back the release date of Bowmen from its original release date of December 31st, 2020 to March 1st, 2021. I would like to take a brief moment to explain the reasoning behind that decision, the current state of the game, and where we plan to go from here. First and foremost, the development of Bowmen has been an incredibly awesome and rewarding journey for myself (the lead developer), and a handful of other individuals who have helped work on Bowmen. It is a relatively small indie game with an even smaller development team, but it has been one of the most rewarding and challenging journeys of my life, and it is awesome to see the project begin to come together as we approach the final release. Due to my other obligations as a scientist, and being almost exclusively the only person working on the game, development and bug fixing has been slower than desired. As such, we did not reach our intended state of polish for the game by the December 31st target date, and so we decided to push it back two months. Due to the uncertainty of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, job responsibilities, etc., this date may shift again in the future as things over the next few months unfold. However, the game in it's current state is very close to being finished. We are considering releasing Bowmen ahead of the listed March 1st, 2021 date using Steam's Early Access feature. We are unsure at this point if this is the route we will eventually go, but it is looking increasingly promising. This is for two reasons: [olist]

What's New?: Release Candidate (RC) v1.02 from Beta v0.135

Major Game/Gameplay Changes

• Season one ("Phoenix") has officially started, moving forward from the Beta. This effectively resets any ranks earned through the Beta and paves the way for the first season available during Early Access and the game's launch.
• Resetting your game data will now only reset your player's stats, but not affect leaderboard scores or Steam Achievements.
• We've transitioned game data saves away from a registry based system (which is native to the Unity engine) to a file based system. This is to allow for steam cloud saves and synchronization across computers.
• Users now have the ability to join and leave the global chat channel using commands (type /help into the chat channel to see the commands, or go to the support forum). Also, chat moderation tools have been added to GM accounts, allowing GMs to ban, warn, and unban players from the chat channel.
• The final boss Lord Pain has been added to the game, who will spawn on inferno difficulty if you survive long enough.
• EXP earned from enemies now scales with difficulty (i.e. more EXP is gained per kill on inferno difficulty than on hard).

GUI Changes

• Some art assets have been updated to support the 4k (3840x2160) resolution.
• Chat GUI has had its positioning slightly modified so that text in the chat is no longer cropped.

Achievement Changes

• The hidden "Beta" achievement is no longer attainable, since we are moving forward towards the first release candidate. It has been replaced with the hidden achievement "Vanguard", which will be given to players that play Bowmen during the first season and Early Access.
• The "Untouchable" achievement has been added, which unlocks for surviving 400 seconds on hell difficulty or higher without taking any damage.
• The "Masfury" achievement has been added, which unlocks once you forge Masfury.
• The "Epitaph" achievement has been added, which unlocks after you die 100 times (and thus, unlocking the Undead skin).
• The "So it Begins" achievement has been added, which unlocks after completing the tutorial.
• The "Overkill" achievement has been added, which unlocks after killing 15 enemies at once.
• The "Bowmaster" achievement has been added, which unlocks after fully upgrading the Multishot skill.
• The "Infernal Balrog Slayer" achievement icon has been modified to fit with the art style of the other achievements.
• The "Lord Pain Slayer" achievement has been added, which unlocks after defeating Lord Pain on Inferno difficulty.

Item Changes

• The legendary item Rico's Chet has been added to the game, which gives your single shot arrows a chance to cleave and hit nearby enemies in addition to the initial target. This item has no drop restrictions and can be found off any mob in the game.
• The item previously known as Shed, the Golden Savior and Prot's Golden Buckler has been renamed to Heavy Golden Buckler. The flavor text has been modified to match the change.

Bug Fixes

• How high angle critical hits are calculated has been modified. This should fix an issue whereby some arrows, even if not high angle shots, would deal crit damage.
• You can now exit the "Options" and "Credits" menus by hitting the escape key in addition to clicking the exit button.
• Fixed an issue where old background music would play when returning from onslaught.
• Spawn locations and positioning of the Barbarian and Graybeard have been changed so that they no longer appear to "overlap" if spawned at the same time.
• How enemy health bars are ordered has been slightly changed so that the Infernal Balrog or Lord Pain health bars always appear above the others.

What's New?: Beta v0.135 from Beta v0.134

Major Game/Gameplay Changes

• "+X EXP" text now pops up after an enemy is killed, letting you know how much EXP has been earned for each enemy.
• Enemies now spawn in "waves", rather than spawning as a constant stream. This allows the player to recuperate if they dealt with a wave efficiently. Over time, more enemies spawn per wave, increasing the difficulty.
• In response to the addition of "waves", item mechanics have changed slightly (for example, Mjolnir deals less damage), and bombs spawn less frequently.
• Item text has been modified to indicate item quality, based on how powerful the item is at damaging enemies. Items with higher quality will drop later in the encounter, while during the first few waves of enemies items with lower power will drop.
• Items with the new "Legendary" quality will only drop off bosses (Balrog), off enemies with a lower drop chance, and/or after the player as completed some prerequisite (in the case of Masfury).
• The legendary sword Masfury requires you to collect Pieces of Balrog Hearts to assemble. The sword drops after the player has collected three Pieces of Balrog Heart in one sitting.
• Enemies have been adjusted across the board to accommodate the major gameplay changes listed here (health, movement speed, damage, etc.).
• A new healing animation has been added to the Scroll of Regeneration, which plays whenever the item is activated.
• Two new enemy types have been added: the Skeleton Mage and Bat Riders. These enemies will cast spells on you from afar, have a large health pool, and must be dealt with fairly quickly. Bat Riders stay in the air until killed.
• You are no longer unable to shoot until your last arrow has landed. Players can now rapidly shoot for faster and more engaging gameplay.
• A new item has been added: Akash, Greatstaff. This is a one time use item that will summon the Wizard to cast Genesis, a large area of effect attack that can help clear the map.
• Fireball animation for the large Fel Bats has been updated. It also has a small animation when it hits the ground or the player.
• Mark of the Barbarian, the first game buff, has been added to the game. This buff will give you a 10% chance to "evade" or completely dodge an enemy attack upon each enemy hit. This buff is provided by the Barbarian and is given to your character at random intervals. Lasts 1 minute.

GUI Changes

• The text for your player's current angle has been slightly adjusted to anchor to the right of the health bar.

Item Changes

• Mana cost per second of Angelsbane has been increased to 7%.
• Mana cost per second of Mjolnir has been increased to 5%.

Bug Fixes

• The "earth shaking" effect of the Infernal Balrog walking will now no longer occur if the Balrog is currently playing the "die" animation.
• Fixed an issue where the player could spawn item effects even while the game is paused.
• Force quitting the game will no longer cause the chat window to report your "last onslaught" score when you log back in.
• Fixed an issue where users could add a new paragraph line in their name.
• Some GUI elements have been re-positioned to avoid overlap with other elements.
• Players will no longer be able to spawn item drops (Ghost Ship, Sword of Justice, etc.) while the game is paused.
• Fixed an issue where players could equip a "hidden" Marksman skin by accident.
• Fixed an issue where players could take "negative damage" (essentially a heal) if they had sufficient Fortitude.
• Tooltips will now reposition to the left of items if the item is on the far right side of the screen. This is to prevent any tooltips from going "off screen".
• Fixed an issue where bosses could not be hit by the ghost ship spawned from the Captain's Mace.
• Fixed an issue where "EXP gained" was being incorrectly reported.
• Fixed an issue where items would potentially spawn right on top of one another, making it difficult to selectively equip one.
• Fixed an issue where the player could generate many "frozen" arrows in the air with the multishot, by spamming the shoot key while the arrows were firing.
• Fixed a few issues whereby sound effects would not be properly adjusted by your settings in the game's options.

What's New?: Beta v0.134 from Beta v0.133

Major Game/Gameplay Changes

• The player may now increase their stat points on the "Hero Information" screen. The game will no longer pause automatically at the start of an onslaught for stat point distribution purposes. However, you can still pause with the "K" key during an onslaught to enter stat points.
• The game now has three different background audio tracks that it cycles through during Onslaught.
• A brief tutorial has been added to the game, which instructs the player how to play the first time they start an onslaught.
• Playtesters can no longer level up using the "0" key during Onslaught.
• We've changed how the game handles connecting to our online servers and we've added in error messages. The game is now playable offline, however, your rank and scores will not be updated during offline play.
• Completed some GUI updates (such as the "exit" button on the credits screen).

What's New?: Beta v0.133 from Beta v0.130

Major Game/Gameplay Changes

• Arrows no longer scale damage with flight time. Instead, arrows that reach a certain y height will have their damage increased by either 300% or 400%, depending upon how high they go. The "Training Sword" item has been updated accordingly.
• Enemies have had their movement speed significantly slowed, spawn rates dropped, and their health boosted to accommodate for the arrow damage changes.
• Bomb and item damage have been modified to accommodate for the enemy health increases.
• The items Vol, Sword of Justice, Stonehammer, and Captain's Mace have been modified. Instead of dropping the Sword, Spirit Golem, or Ghost Ship, respectively, in a given location, the player can now select where the objects will spawn and deal damage to enemies.
• The "Balrog Slayer" achievement has been modified. It now will unlock after you have killed the infernal balrog 2 times in one sitting on any difficulty.
• The "Marksman", "Ranger", "Hunter", and "Archer" ranks now also unlock any achievements below those ranks as well. For example, if a player achieves the rank of "Ranger" from one run of inferno, they will now also unlock the "Hunter" and "Archer" achievements as well.
• Because of the gameplay changes above that favor skilled high angle shots, we've changed the Z and Right mouse buttons to toggle wide and small views, rather than requiring to be held down.
• Items will now drop 1 at a time, with an item not dropping if one is presently on the map. Item drop rates have been increased.
• Mana has been added to the game. Mana will slowly regenerate over time along with health, but it is not influenced by the Vitality stat, but by Intelligence instead.
• Angelsbane has been modified to now cost mana instead of health. The item is also now toggled active or inactive with the "A" key.
• Razor Shield has been modified to increase your Fortitude by 6, down from 17. This is to balance its damage bonus and make Shed, the Golden Savior viable.
• Shed, the Golden Savior has been modified to increase your Fortitude by 18, up from 7.
• The item Frosthowl has been added to the game. It adds frost damage to your attacks and will slow enemies by 50% if hit.
• How the game damages the player has been modified. This is to decrease the possibility of "negative damage" if the player has sufficient stats in Fortitude and Strength.
• Background Audio ("BG") and Sound Effects Audio ("SFX") options have been added to the game, allowing players to adjust game volume.
• The intro "Ethereal Gem" logo is now animated.
• Skins have been added to the game.
• A basic "chat" feature has been implemented on the home screen, which allows current logged in players to communicate with one another.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue whereby the last arrow of the multishot would shoot with 0 power.
• Fixed an issue whereby multiple items could drop on the map at once.
• Fixed an issue where temp power can reset to 0 or to the previous last shot (if you're trying to charge a shot while firing).
• Fixed an issue where ultra high angle shot text was not the same size as regular damage text.
• Fixed an issue where the item Frosthowl was not affecting the Infernal Balrog.
• Fixed an issue where "Double Kill" and "Multikill" sounds were not correctly being called.
• Fixed an issue whereby damage would be dealt to the player twice, if double damage would be fatal.