Hello everyone! We have just yesterday completed a week of Early Access, and today we are coming to our third, and this time MAJOR update! Patch v0.9.028c brings with it tons of fixes all around the game, but most importantly, it is all about performance and Endless mode which is now split into two, Endless and Overlord modes! Before talking in more detail about those, let's jump right into the list of changes for this patch, and as always we will talk a bit more about what is going on in the game down below!

Full change list for version v0.9.028c:

Main changes:

- Endless Mode is now split into two separate game modes, both of which have been extensively reworked in their functionality: -- Endless Mode: Level up quickly and fight across multiple scenarios with increasing difficulty with every cycle. Enemies will become tougher and more resistant and you can go on for as long as you manage! -- Overlord Mode: Face an increasing number of powerful Lords of the Void, which require less and less enemies per cycle until you are facing Lords all day long! Difficulty increases with every cycle, and so does the number of bosses. - Achievements that required Endless Cycles are now split between both modes. If you completed the achievements previously, they will still be completed (this may cause a small glitch with the switched achievement rewards); - Major performance improvements in all areas of the game, especially in very high intensity scenarios; - Overhead combat text has been changed to be incremental, so multiple hits on the same target will refresh and increase the number instead of generating a new text. You can switch between the previous and new styles in the General Settings, however, the previous style will lead to performance issues in high-intensity scenarios; - If Special effect visibility slider is all the way down, some visual effects will not be used at all which should improve performance considerably in certain scenarios;

General changes and fixes:

- Multiple fixes related to the error where you would not be able to pick any skill when levelling up. This is a rare issue and we have made multiple changes that should prevent it entirely, but let us know if you still see this error; - Implemented some changes to the saving system to try and make the system more resistant to corrupted files; - Added visual improvements to the Runes screen so it is easier to locate/remember where runes are placed; - Fixed issue where the Curse Intensity tooltip could stay on screen indefinitely; - Fixed issue where the currently selected rune would persist as selected even when you switched characters; - Fixed multiple minor localization issues; - Fixed minor visual issues on ultra-wide monitors; - Fixed issue where Prestige Stars would show incorrectly from level 100 to 110 (and other higher levels); - In any endless mode, certain visual effects will not play to help with performance; - When a target takes damage and is immune to damage, a Immune label will appear; - Objective notifications now will only show the latest notification, instead of building an endless queue; - Fixed an issue where FPS limit was resetting to the screen refresh rate with every start-up; - FPS limit slider is now capped at 120% of your monitor refresh rate; - Fixed issue where enemies would eventually have blue health bars if you had enough summons; - Removed "invisible pillars" in the Dungeon of Despair; - Fixed multiple "invisible exceptions" that would consume performance; - Fixed Overlord Mode tooltip displaying "5% extra bosses" instead of "5" extra bosses; - Fixed Curse Intensity tooltip showing big decimal numbers;

Enemy changes:

- Extended the damage area indicator of a few boss skills to better reflect the range of their skills; - Fixed issue where the Paladin Void Hunter (enemy) would not be targetable by minions; - Snake's poison bomb is no longer affected by Opacity settings; - Reduced health of Pillars of Despair by 30%; - Increased the cooldown of the Pillars of Despair skills by 100%; - Removed Stun effects from the attacks of all enemies; - Fixed an issue where enemies that should be immune to pushback were not immune; - Endless cycles now also reduce the effectiveness of Absorption shields (Arcane Shield); - Small spider attacks are now not affected by Effect Opacity options; - Fixed issue where the Void Presence would receive negative effects;

Skills and Runes changes:

- Fixed issue where the skill Disengage would not appear for the Sentinel's second bow; - Changed the tag from Spread Shot from Blast to Projectile; - Pending skill points during a match will now be kept if you go through an endless portal; - Fixed an issue where Call Lightning was applying Disoriented instead of Dazed; - Chromatic Bolt now fires in the direction you are aiming, as stated in the tooltip; - Holy Fire now has the Frontal tag; - Exorcism tooltip will now show 0.5 correctly instead of rounding up to 1; - Fixed issue where certain skills such as Mine Field and Explosive trap may not remove the objects from the world when the skill is removed; - Totems and Ballistas now have a proper summon quantity limit, but have had their damage increased; - Fixed an issue where Totems and Ballistas were not dealing the intended damage when they caused a critical strike; - Fixed an issue where Totems and Ballistas would block the movement of your minions; - Fixed issue where Totems and Ballistas would not apply on-hit effects; - Fixed issue where Purity rune would use the incorrect value to determine how many effects are in the target, yielding inconsistent results; - Fixed issue where Bladestorm and Flurry would not be used if there were no enemies nearby; - Fixed an issue where Shadow Nova would apply Exposed, which was not intended; - Shadow Step now grants 0.5 seconds of immunity after a teleport; - Surefooted rune now reduces the damage you take by 15% to replace the Stun immunity bonus; Now, with that huge list out of the way, to mention a little about the differences between Endless and Overlord modes, while they share a lot of similarities, Endless is more relaxed and allows for more free experimentation and scaling, while Overlord mode is intended as a more challenging mode so you can test your skills to see how far you will go. Both modes are different from the current implementation of Endless and have tons of tweaks in multiple areas, so we recommend you give them both a try and see what you think. To talk a little bit about performance, the changes in this update should be noticeable all around the game and involve major refactoring and changes in all major areas of the game. There are still a few places where we can squeeze in some more performance, but those will come in the following weeks. And speaking of the next steps, as expected, this first week was focused on fixes, improvements and adjustments, and not on new content. There is one major bug that is getting addressed next which is the link with Steam Achievements, which is not currently working. We expect to have a new patch shortly addressing that, and in the background, we have already started work on some new content that we expect will be coming to the game very soon as well which we hope you will enjoy! And with all of that said, I just wanted to once again thank you all for the amazing support so far! We have been working day and night to make sure that the game is as good as it can be, and a lot of the fixes in this update come from reports from the community! So thank you for helping us improve the game and for all the feedback so far! As mentioned before, this is just the beginning, we literally just completed the first week of Early Access, and there is still A LOT to come, both in terms of improvements AND new content! Best wishes, - The dev team

[ 2022-11-15 23:08:53 CET ] [ Original post ]