Hey everyone! I know some of you thought this day would never come, but it's finally here! I am glad to bring to you today Soulstone Survivors Winterfall Update! And with it the first batch of new content added to the game!







While this update clearly had a focus on new weapons and skills, the new content added also required multiple systems that have been built from the ground up to allow us to develop new content a lot faster! For everything we build for the game, we have modularity in mind, and with every new block we create we get new tools to develop and expand the game, hopefully in fun ways! While we have the flashy images above, this is far from the full list of changes for this version, which you can find below!

New content:

- Holiday Event: 22 Dec - 05 Jan Guaranteed to find Bumble's Lair for a limited time to unlock secret achievements! Lair will be harder to find after the event. - 8 New craftable weapons: Paladin: Harbinger of Justice Chaoswalker: Artifact of Corruption Assassin: Curved Daggers Legionnaire: Jupiter's Reach Beastmaster: Nature's Fury Elementalist: Scepter of Frost Necromancer: Life Harvester Death Knight: Greatsword of Doom - 19 new active skills: Paladin: Hammer of Justice, Penance Assassin: Twin Daggers, Smoke Bomb Death Knight: Unholy Aura, Reap Necromancer: Unholy Bolt, Ancient Curse Legionnaire: Jupiter's Spear, Summon Infantry Beastmaster: Wild Strike, Summon Swamp Boar Elementalist: Severe Cold, Freezing Blow Chaoswalker: Seeking Chaos, Aura of Chaos All characters: Secret1, Secret2, Secret3

Rune changes:

- Now you can also pick starting skills multiple times with Singular Focus; - Starting skills can now be selected by other characters with the use of a Mastery rune; - Fixed issue where Mastery runes sometimes would yield inconsistent results, often adding less than 6 skills to the pool; - Mastery runes will not add the same skill twice if you have two masteries that would apply for the same skill, it will always try to add unique skills if possible;

Skill changes:

- Added new Seasonal skill type; - Smoke Bomb is now an Assassin class skill, and Backstab is now a weapon skill; - Changed how skills that deal extra damage on critical strike work to be an actual multiplier on top of the damage, instead of additional Critical Damage Modifier, increasing their effectiveness considerably; - Increased the speed-up rate of Arcane Conjuration and Call Lightning skills so they don't accumulate as much; - Paralysis extra direct damage per stack increased from 0.5% to 1%; - Arcane Blade cooldown reduced from 10 to 8.5 seconds; - Arcane Rift cooldown reduced from 12 to 10 seconds; - Arcane Disk damage increased from 450 to 480; - Arcane Disk cooldown reduced from 5.5 to 5.2 seconds; - Backstab damage increased from 150 to 300; - Backstab now also applies a 800 damage hemorrhage if you are behind the target; - Beacon of Light area increased by 40%; - Beacon of Light damage increased from 52 to 80; - Bladed Chakram damage increased from 50 to 120; - Bladed Chakram rot damage reduced from 500 to 450; - Bladed Chakram cooldown reduced from 7 to 6 seconds; - Blizzard damage increased from 625 to 875; - Bomb Barrage damage increased from 70 to 85; - Chain Lightning cooldown reduced from 8 to 6 seconds; - Chain Lightning damage increased from 230 to 400; - Chain Lightning jumps increased from 5 to 7; - Chaos Bolt projectile moves slower and can fire more secondary bolts; - Chaos Bomb maximum damage increased from 700 to 1000; - Chaos Totem projectiles move slower and can fire more secondary bolts; - Combustion Burn damage increased from 60 to 70; - Death Claw maximum damage increased from 500 to 1000; - Demolish damage increased from 200 to 300; - Demolish wave damage increased from 50 to 100; - Fire Shield damage increased from 40 to 50; - Fire Shield burn damage increased from 100 to 120; - Firewall burn damage increased from 400 to 480; - Firewall cooldown reduced from 12 to 11 seconds; - Frostbolt cooldown reduced from 2 to 1 second; - Frostbolt damage reduced from 330 to 300; - Glacier damage increased from 650 to 900; - Glacier area increased by 30%; - Heroic Strike now properly multiplies damage by 3 on critical strikes; - Holy Fire now properly multiplies damage by 3 on critical strikes; - Ice Vortex now applies approximately 30% less stacks of Slow; - Intimidating Shout cooldown reduced from 20 to 18 seconds; - Intimidating Shout duration increased from 6 to 8 seconds; - Lightning Bolt cooldown reduced from 6 to 5 seconds; - Lightning Bolt damage increased from 310 to 700; - Lightning Bolt Dazed increased from 8% to 10%; - Poison Bomb damage increased from 40 to 100; - Poison Bomb poison damage reduced from 500 to 450; - Poison Bomb cooldown reduced from 5 to 4; - Scent of Blood cooldown increased from 30 to 34 seconds; - Shield Bash skill no longer stuns targets, which is the intended behaviour; - Shrapnel Bomb damage increased from 200 to 270; - Shrapnel Bomb sub-projectile damage increased from 30 to 45; - Smite cooldown reduced from 7 to 6 seconds; - Sniper Shot now properly multiplies damage by 5 on critical strikes; - Summon Battle Moose Horn attack damage reduced from 300 to 150; - Summon War Tiger bite attack no longer applies a Bleed for 300 damage, but still applies Wounds; - Summon War Tiger claw attack no longer applies Fragility, but still applies Bleed for 300 damage; - Summon War Tiger claw attack damage reduced from 150 to 80; - Templar's Verdict area increased by 30%; - Templar's Verdict now properly multiplies damage by 3 on critical strikes; - Thrust damage increased from 60 to 90; - Thunder Clap area increased by 25%; - Thunder Clap cooldown reduced from 9 to 5 seconds; - Thunder Clap damage increased from 610 to 1100; - Thunder Strike cooldown reduced from 8 to 6 seconds; - Thunder Strike damage increased from 500 to 1300; - Venomous Strike damage increased from 70 to 120; - Venomous Strike poison damage reduced from 250 to 220; - Weakening Grenade damage increased from 240 to 350; - Weakening Grenade cooldown reduced from 7 to 6 seconds; - Whirlwind damage increased from 110 to 140; - Whirlwind cooldown reduced from 1.5 to 1.4 seconds;

Enemy changes:

Corrupted Paladin: - Templar's Verdict damage reduced from 25 to 20; - Templar's Verdict charge time increased from 1.2 to 2 seconds; - Holy Fire charge time increased from 1.2 to 2 seconds; - Holy Fire projectile spread reduced considerably; - Holy Fire projectile speed reduced considerably; - Holy Fire damage reduced from 15 to 8; Corrupted Death Knight: - Obliterate charge time increased from 1.2 to 1.6 seconds; - Shadow Spikes charge time increased from 1.2 to 1.6 seconds; Lords of the Void: - Added minimum cooldown to most Lord of the Void skills, so at very high levels they will still use all of their skills instead of always prioritising the same skill;

General changes and fixes:

- Attempt fix for issue where on certain MacOS machines the mouse can be invisible/bugged; - Created all game achievements on Steam, they should reflect on your account when you log into the game for the first time; - Further performance improvements that might assist in certain scenarios; - Fixed issue where certain skill such as Lightning Bolt could fire their projectiles into the ground, becoming considerably less effective; - Fixed issue where Doom and Cursed would not consider Exposed when calculating whether or not they have enough damage to execute the target; - Fixed issue where Vulnerable effect was consuming 75% of its charges, instead of 25% as intended; - Fixed an issue where Burn effects would deal 20% less damage than intended; - Fixed an issue where Synergy effects that from one negative effect could apply another, were not scaling with your stats or skill modifiers; - Removed invisibile objects from the Caves of Dhal Zhog which would cause strange pathing; - Fixed issue with skills such as Storm of Arrows where lower FPS would cause them to pile up too many projectiles, being less effective; - Fixed issue where with a controller it was possible to spend resources to craft the same item multiple times without any benefits; - Bosses are now virtually immune to pushback effects to reduce some strange behaviour that could happen in extreme scenarios; - Fixed issue where Arcane Blade would not count how many targets it hit; - Fixed issue where the Corrupted Spellblade Arcane Overload skill could flash the entire screen with its effect; - Fixed issue where the Corrupted Death Knight Poison Bomb would leave an invisible pool of poison in the ground if your special visibility was too low. It is no longer affected by this setting; - Hit special effects will play up until Endless cycle 2. Previously, they would not play in any Endless/Overlord level to improve performance; - Fixed an issue where if you Restarted a match by either the pause menu or end game screen from within an Endless level, you would restart in the current map, instead of the original map; - Fixed issue where Totems would not scale with Curse Intensity like other summon skills do; - Fixed Discord's "time alive" to count endless levels time as well; - Multiple tooltip and skill description fixes where values might not represent the actual skill values; - Multiple UI and visual fixes and improvements across the game; - New seasonal soundtrack and sound effects; - Tons of small bug fixes across all areas.

Developer notes

As always, we wanted to add a small section below talking about the ins and outs of the update, so lets just jump right in into a few topics!

Update delay

As you all know, this update took us about a week longer than we had anticipated, and I know we just came into Early Access, that we have all been burned with games that just got abandoned before being fully realised, so I completely understand how it feels to be on the player's side of the equation in these situations. I know these might be just words for you, but trust me when I say we are in it for the long haul, for the game, for the pride we have in what we are creating with your help, and for the pleasure it is that is developing this game. Thanks to all your amazing support so far, the Early Access release has been incredible, reaching more people than we could have ever hoped for, and now more than ever, we feel we have a duty of making this game as good as it can be, but regardless of how things are going so far, we are still a tiny team, which allows us to move very quickly in some ways, but also makes it so the personal lives of each of us have a huge impact in how fast the team as a whole can work. This last month wasn't easy, and the personal challenges we faced ended up slowing development for a while, but thankfully that is now behind us.

Getting more help

With that said, we are starting to take the steps towards a more healthy future. We are currently looking for extra help, trying to grow our team a little bit and to fill the role of Unity C# developer and potentially the help of another artist so we can at the same time tackle bigger features (and oh boy are there some big features coming) AND continue adding content in the multiple areas of the game at the same time, such as more weapons, skills, runes, skill tree, etc. We have a ton of plans for the game, and by growing a little bit with a likeminded team I'm sure we will be able to do a lot more, so if you have some experience (specially coding) and genuinely love working with games, playing roguelites, talking design and getting your hands dirty, feel free to send us your your CV at jobs@gamesmithing.com !

Next steps for the game

In this status update we talk a bit about what we see as some of the main priorities we want to tackle on the game in the near future. As you can see from this update, we are tackling these bit by bit. You can expect new weapons and skills very frequently, as for us offering as many ways to play the game will always be one of the pillars of the game, but two of the big features we will start tackling soon are "Map Differentiation" and "Interesting ways to spend your resources". Both are large features with their own challenges and but we expect to take steps towards both of these in the first quarter of 2023. We recognize especially the latter as a major point of concern with players hoarding thousands of major soulstones, and we want to reinforce that it is very high in our priorities list.

But what about X skill that is crap, or Y skill that is OP, or that crazy bug?

Even though this update just came out, we still have a looong list of tasks to take care of. This update brought quite a few balance changes bringing some underperforming skills more in line, but not all of them. We haven't had the time to sit and test all skills just yet on all the different builds they can be used in, so we are aware there are still some that are lagging behind, and some that are extremely strong right now. We are also aware of quite a few bugs and missing features like the crappy controller navigation for curses and achievements, but we have to pick our battles. Those will all come, in time, and hopefully with a bit more help we will also be able to tackle these more quickly in the near future, but keep your feedback coming, reporting the errors here or in our Discord https://discord.gg/5RcXb8attT is always an immense help!

Next update when...?

As also mentioned before, we believe a cadence of monthly updates allows us to develop significant new content with quality, so we are planning the next update for the end of Jan/beginning of Feb. With the holidays coming it is time for everyone to be with their families and take a small break, recharge the batteries and come back for full power in the first week of Jan, but we are still around and we might sneak in a hotfix or two this next week. With that said, I ask you for a little patience if we are at times quiet, usually the quieter we are, the busier we are trying to catch up and making sure all is working well. We will try to do better next year with more transparency from our side, which is something we can do, another advantage of being so small, but it is just hard to juggle all the tasks, we hope you understand! And with that particularly big wall of text behind us haha, I just want to say that we really, REALLY appreciate your support, we don't take the amazing community the game has for granted and without you there definitely would be no game, so thank you all once again! If you have any questions, or run into any issues, do let us know and we will do our best to try and sort out the issues, and we hope you enjoy the update! Best wishes, - The dev team