Hello Adventurers!

The next few weeks will be a bit quieter from our side and youll see a delay between the update for a simple reason - holidays. Most of our team will take a break and rest before the big final push for the main release.

There will be a few minor releases along the way, but we are currently preparing the 1.0 release along with everything else thats necessary. So today we want to give you a small outlook over the coming changes.


[h2]Final Stage[/h2]
We are currently working on the last stage for the Main Story, the final Lord will be awaiting you in a special stage that works a bit differently from the previous environments. We dont want to spoil too much at this point. After completing the final stage youll be able to unlock and play with some additional end game content.


[h2]Languages[/h2]
Weve been asked many times about additional languages. Weve finished our localization system so the game can display different languages, and were now in the process of getting a language pass on the English version. After that the translations are coming. New languages will be added before the 1.0 release and depending on the success of the final release we might add even more. Currently, we target more than 10 additional languages, including German, French, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese (BR/PT), Spanish and a few more that we are going to announce later.


[h2]Balancing[/h2]
When we started with Halls of Torment, we were less conscious of how the endgame will look like. Now that we have more content and a final destination in mind, well tweak some knobs to bring it up to a certain standard and make it more viable for you to play with different classes, abilities, and items.
This means that many things will get improved, but also that few things will need to be reduced in their effectiveness. These changes will be implemented and tested with smaller updates before the 1.0 release.


[h2]Shrine of Torment[/h2]
The Shrine of Torment will be our late game mechanic that gets unlocked in stage 5, the Chambers of Dissonance. In the future the Agony mode will be part of this shrine instead of being a switch in the default stage selection. Additionally there will be the option to activate artifacts that create new challenges in the halls. New artifacts will be obtainable from different sources while playing the game. Artifacts will have various effects on your runs; for example, some of them spawn traps in the level, reduce the run time to 20 minutes, spawn additional enemies, or temporarily slow your movement down after youve used your main weapon.
A big thanks here for all the community suggestions we got, there were certainly more than we can implement until the 1.0 update!


[h2]Other Improvements[/h2]
We are working on multiple smaller things as well. One of the next quality of live improvements will be a quest tracker that shows the progress of a previously selected quest during your run. It also comes with the quest board as a part of the pause menu, so you can inspect your quests mid-run. And of course we are still working on bug fixes, making the game more stable, and improving its performance.

We hope this outlook makes you excited for our future updates!

Thanks for your support!
Chasing Carrots

[h2]Hello everyone![/h2]

Thank you all for the reports.
After rolling back the version earlier today, we finally found the issues cause projectiles of enemies causing trouble. A short but detailed bug fix list:

• Fixing one shot kills caused by Wyrms on Ember Grounds
  
• Fixing projectiles of enemies would not spawn
  
• Fixing projectiles of enemies would not deal damage
  
• Fixing projectiles of enemy explosion effects would not trigger
  
• Arcane Rift no longer dealing tick damage with base damage increases
  

Experimental Release: 2024-03-11
Main Release: 2024-03-13 (delayed)

There are still slow downs in the game that we haven't found the source yet.
The update for the main will be rescheduled to a later date.

-----

Last Update:
Updated the experimental branch:
- Fixed a lag issue with the Arcane Rift
- Elemental Rift no longer spawns as extra Rifts
- Fixed descriptions
- Fixed a bug that not all electrify applies from Kugelblitz were counted for the Specialist quest. (Note: Crits through Sorceress traits do not count on purpose)

-----

Greetings Adventurers
Its time for another ritual to summon new features, content, and bug fixes. First of all wed like to thank the Godot community for finding a fix for the dreaded audio problems that users with low-latency interfaces experienced.

But besides that, we have also some new hexes on the table: Lord hexes, to be precise. You probably already have encountered one for the Lord of Pain in the Haunted Caverns. Now weve added one in each level for, one for each Lord. Happy hunting!

Please note, this patch will be released on the experimental branch first and will go live on Tuesday the 12th March 2024. If you wish to receive the patch early, please join the beta branch Experimental


[h2]Patch Notes[/h2]

• Fixed an issue that could lead to crashes whenever bullets or effects were duplicated.
  
• Fixed a crash caused by the Adaptation-Trait of Spectral Fists when Cunning Technique was picked afterwards.
  
• Fix: Spawn rate in Chambers of Dissonance would not increase with Agony.
  
• Added custom key bindings for Auto Aim and Pause in the settings.
  

• Added hexes for all Lords
  
• Lords have new and improved sounds
  
• The Lords have reinforcements
  

• Arcane Rifts upgrade: added three new upgrades that change the element of the rifts. Only one upgrade can be chosen.
  
• Added Arcane Rifts Specialist-Quest
  
• Kugelblitz upgrade Final Discharge has been added. Kugelblitz finishes in a strong explosion.
  
• Kugelblitz Specialist-Quest has been added.
  
• Flamestrike can now be transformed into Froststrike with a new ability upgrade.
  
• New quest Flamestrike-Specialist has been added.
  

• Dragons Breath, Refined Flame: The value changes for Attack Speed and Burn Damage have been fixed.
  
• Fix: Champions in Chambers of Dissonance could still get the Fast Walker modifier.
  
• Fixed Trait: Fusion (Meteor Strikes) -> Rel. -> Abs. Crit Bonus
  
• Fixed Trait: Accuracy X (Transfixion) -> Description
  
• Fixed Trait: Proficient Stance IV (Sage) -> Damage Value
  
• Fixed Trait: Frost Affinity -> Description
  
• Fix: Warlock main attack -> Counts now as Summon for Multistrike & Attack Speed
  
• Fixed Quest: Spirit Warrior Specialist -> no more tracking from other abilities
  
• Fixed an issue that caused Base Attack Speed to affect attacks that are triggered by distance moved.
  
• Fixed Sage description -> Movement Speed is actually 4.5m/s not 4.0m/s
  
• Breakables will no longer add damage to the damage statistics.
  

Hello Adventurers!

We are sorry for our Japanese players, we've accidentally patched a Japanese localization test into the game that made the text broken on Japanese systems. We've reverted this and fixed some other issues along with it!

• Removing broken Japanese characters for Japanese players.
  
• Spirit Warrior's shockwave now counts as dash damage.
  
• Sage will now properly transform "Arcane Elements" into his main weapon.
  
• Arcane Elements unlock now elemental affinities.
  
• Fire patches and shadow patches weren't properly affected by opacity settings.
  
• Spikes and thunder crown should now count as item damage.
  
• Bosses in Haunted Caverns wouldn't face you when attacking. (they are a bit shy like some silly ghosts sometimes)
  

Greetings Adventurers
Its time for the Chambers of Dissonance to open its gates. Face new dangers from the depths of the halls and meet new heroes. With this update we are closing in on the finale.

Wed like to thank everyone who helped us with their feedback on the experimental branch. It allowed us to eliminate most of the kinks for this update. Now is the time to make it available to all players. If you have completed quests on the experimental branch, the achievements should unlock on the next game start.


[h2]Heres an overview of the incoming changes[/h2]

• Performance improvements on all ends, general ones and for specific abilities and cases.
  
• Fixed some sources of common crashes. As per usual we ask you to send us crash dumps after every new update to find new unknown sources for crashes. Thanks for your continuous reporting, even if we cant reply to everyone!
  
• Trait Variants View: When selecting traits with multiple variants you can now display the mutual exclusive traits in a separate view (right mouse click, or LB on the gamepad).
  

• The next stage that can be unlocked by defeating the Twisted Construct in Frozen Depths.
  
• Chambers of Dissonance quest board has been added.
  
• The Chambers feature a complete roster of new unique monster types, including three new bosses and a final Lord boss.
  
• The stage comes with its own new music track.
  
• The difficulty should be manageable for most regular players. Players that have maxed out their builds wont have any trouble unless maybe playing with Agony turned on. Were also looking forward to your feedback on this and might apply some adjustments in the final update.
  

• Can be unlocked in the Chambers of Dissonance.
  
• Quest board for Landsknecht has been added.
  
• Landsknecht-Mark has been added.
  
• Projectile focused character wielding a powerful arquebus and magic grenades.
  
• Magic grenades have a chance to be thrown every time when dealing damage with projectiles. Higher damage yields a significantly better chance.
  
• Landsknecht has 3 variants for each Trait, but from the total of 9, 4 are exclusive for the Landsknecht.
  

• Can be unlocked in the Chambers of Dissonance.
  
• Quest board for Landsknecht has been added.
  
• Sage Mark has been added.
  
• Characters main weapon is the first ability you choose at the beginning of the run.
  
• You start your run with a free ability selection.
  
• Sage traits are focused on abilities in general.
  
• The sage is quite knowledgeable and can always choose from the full set of abilities, even when picking up a scroll instead of a tome.
  

• Added Morning Star ability: a physical projectile/melee ability that gets a damage buff with force.
  
• Morning Star comes with three upgrades and a full set of traits.
  
• Morning Star is unlocked by completing Landsknecht quests.
  
• Added Spectral Fists ability which is a directly attacking summon ability.
  
• Spectral fists' special traits can influence other abilities or be strengthened by main weapon traits..
  
• Spectral Fists are unlocked by completing Sage quests.
  

• Frost Avalanche rebalancing.
  
• Frost Avalanche got a new quest and ability upgrade.
  
• Spirit Warriors rebalancing, scales now with summon count improvements.
  
• Spirit Warriors Twin Warrior upgrade got replaced.
  
• Spirit Warriors got a new ability upgrade + quest.
  
• Hailstorm got a rebalancing: You need to drop the satellites from time to time so that the upgrades will keep doing their job.
  
• Hailstorm got an upgrade including a new quest to set enemies on fire.
  
• Kugelblitz received some changes to make it more useful, especially early on.
  

• Many smaller visual updates in effects and abilities.
  
• Added Physical & Magic Damage blessings.
  
• Multistrike III and Piercing Wind III traits have been added.
  
• New late run min-max traits unlocked through the Sage that can be used when reaching level 70.
  
• Frost effect damage has been reduced to a base of 80 while burn has been increased to 30.
  
• New layout for the Frozen Depths quest board.
  
• Total damage in endscreen has been changed to show the sum of all weapons, filtering out damage sources that have not been the player.
  
• New quest icons. (some are still missing, but will be added for the update next week)
  
• The HUD shows whether you have auto attack and/or auto aim enabled or not.
  
• Trait and ability selection screens have a selection feedback effect. UI effects can be turned off in the settings.
  
• Many smaller bug fixes
  

Update 01 (2024-02-13):
Thanks for the quick feedback, we fixed several issues!
- Landsknecht quests could not be completed
- Sage would not be unlocked
- Possibly the screen flickering (we need feedback for that)
- An Arch was not able to be passed through
- Added missing trait & blessing icons

Update 02 (2024-02-14):
- Landsknecht, fixing the grenade spawn, they shouldn't rain amass anymore
- Landsknecht balancing adjustments, we'll keep trying a few things
- Sage transform to Default Weapon should now work on projectile abilities.
- Some items would not count for the item damage quest
- Adjusting new quests, specifically the kill quest in Chambers of Dissonance

If you don't get the update immediately, please try to restart Steam.

-------------------------------------------

Greetings Adventurers

Today wed like to bring you the next stage for Halls of Torment: The Chambers of Dissonance. This update also introduces two new characters and will be released on the experimental branch for now. Currently, we are in the middle of polishing, balancing, and cleaning up the update. We are kindly asking for your feedback on the new content, specifically regarding its stability and performance.

Our estimate is that this test run on the experimental branch will take about a week before we make it available to everyone. If you want to participate in this feedback round, please go to the game settings -> betas and enable the experimental branch.

As usual, were welcoming you to post your feedback and bug reports in the Steam forums and on our Discord server. It would be a great help for us if you could also mark your posts being related to the experimental branch.


[h2]Heres an overview of the incoming changes[/h2]

• Performance improvements on all ends, general ones and for specific abilities and cases.
  
• Fixed some sources of common crashes. As per usual we ask you to send us crash dumps after every new update to find new unknown sources for crashes. Thanks for your continuous reporting, even if we cant reply to everyone!
  
• Trait Variants View: When selecting traits with multiple variants you can now display the mutual exclusive traits in a separate view (right mouse click, or LB on the gamepad).
  

• The next stage that can be unlocked by defeating the Twisted Construct in Frozen Depths.
  
• Chambers of Dissonance quest board has been added.
  
• The Chambers feature a complete roster of new unique monster types, including three new bosses and a final Lord boss.
  
• The stage comes with its own new music track.
  
• The difficulty should be manageable for most regular players. Players that have maxed out their builds wont have any trouble unless maybe playing with Agony turned on. Were also looking forward to your feedback on this and might apply some adjustments in the final update.
  

• Can be unlocked in the Chambers of Dissonance.
  
• Quest board for Landsknecht has been added.
  
• Landsknecht-Mark has been added.
  
• Projectile focused character wielding a powerful arquebus and magic grenades.
  
• Magic grenades have a chance to be thrown every time when dealing damage with projectiles. Higher damage yields a significantly better chance.
  
• Landsknecht has 3 variants for each Trait, but from the total of 9, 4 are exclusive for the Landsknecht.
  

• Can be unlocked in the Chambers of Dissonance.
  
• Quest board for Landsknecht has been added.
  
• Sage Mark has been added.
  
• Characters main weapon is the first ability you choose at the beginning of the run.
  
• You start your run with a free ability selection.
  
• Sage traits are focused on abilities in general.
  
• The sage is quite knowledgeable and can always choose from the full set of abilities, even when picking up a scroll instead of a tome.
  

• Added Morning Star ability: a physical projectile/melee ability that gets a damage buff with force.
  
• Morning Star comes with three upgrades and a full set of traits.
  
• Morning Star is unlocked by completing Landsknecht quests.
  
• Added Spectral Fists ability which is a directly attacking summon ability.
  
• Spectral fists' special traits can influence other abilities or be strengthened by main weapon traits..
  
• Spectral Fists are unlocked by completing Sage quests.
  

• Frost Avalanche rebalancing.
  
• Frost Avalanche got a new quest and ability upgrade.
  
• Spirit Warriors rebalancing, scales now with summon count improvements.
  
• Spirit Warriors Twin Warrior upgrade got replaced.
  
• Spirit Warriors got a new ability upgrade + quest.
  
• Hailstorm got a rebalancing: You need to drop the satellites from time to time so that the upgrades will keep doing their job.
  
• Hailstorm got an upgrade including a new quest to set enemies on fire.
  
• Kugelblitz received some changes to make it more useful, especially early on.
  

• Many smaller visual updates in effects and abilities.
  
• Added Physical & Magic Damage blessings.
  
• Multistrike III and Piercing Wind III traits have been added.
  
• New late run min-max traits unlocked through the Sage that can be used when reaching level 70.
  
• Frost effect damage has been reduced to a base of 80 while burn has been increased to 30.
  
• New layout for the Frozen Depths quest board.
  
• Total damage in endscreen has been changed to show the sum of all weapons, filtering out damage sources that have not been the player.
  
• New quest icons. (some are still missing, but will be added for the update next week)
  
• The HUD shows whether you have auto attack and/or auto aim enabled or not.
  
• Trait and ability selection screens have a selection feedback effect. UI effects can be turned off in the settings.
  
• Many smaller bug fixes
  

Greetings Adventurers

We wish you all a happy new year! Since last week we are back actively on development and a small update is ready for today with some new ability upgrades and bug fixes.
This will be the last update before the next major content which will include two new characters and a new stage.


[h2]Change Log | 2024-01-11[/h2]

[h3]General Changes[/h3]

• Chests with uncommon loot will drop more often.
  
• Dialogues contain new voices and add our voice actors to the credits.
  
• In Dialogues, characters will now use their mouths properly.
  

• Adding new ability upgrade Refined Flame which makes enemies hit by Dragons Breath take more burn damage in exchange for Attack Speed.
  
• Adding the quest Dragons Breath Specialist to unlock the new upgrade, requiring players to hit max burn stacks.
  
• Heat Blast upgrade adds Physical to Dragons Breath attacks.
  
• Dragons Breath is now more focused into the aim direction, having less spread.
  
• Fixing Agony Upgrade, it was not increasing base attack speed but normal attack speed.
  
• Reach traits do no longer add Area but Damage bonus instead.
  

• Adding a new ability upgrade Echoing Light. Enemies hit by the Aura have a chance to echo the light and damage all others around them for the same damage.
  
• Adding the quest Radiant aura Specialist requires players to make a single strong hit of 25 000 damage on an enemy with Radiant Light.
  
• Performance Improvements.
  
• Radiant Aura flash intensity now scales with the enemy flash intensity.
  

• Adding a new ability upgrade Cyclone which changes the movement pattern of blades to fly in a circular pattern and extend their flying duration.
  
• New quest Ring Blades Specialist that wants your blades to travel for 500 miles.
  
• Ring Blades no longer disappear when being blocked.
  

• Meteor Strikes can now be transformed into Fireballs with a new upgrade, making the projectiles fly through enemies and hitting them for high damage, leaving a trail of fire and exploding after a certain amount of hits.
  
• Meteor Strike Specialist quest has been added that requires players to reach a certain amount of crits with a single meteor (counting every over crit trigger) to be completed.
  
• Scattered Debris does now scale with Area instead of Multistrike.
  
• Burning Craters now scale with Area.
  
• Burning Craters also burn enemies in the explosion area.
  
• Reducing the effect of the Blast trait from 30% to 25%.
  
• Scaling down the size of visual effects.
  
• Performance improvements.
  

• Golems can now be duplicated with the Double Trouble upgrade.
  
• Unlocked by the quest Golem Specialist which requires players to have the Golem rolling for 20 minutes.
  
• Ferrite Infusion does now add shockwaves to the golem when moving, adding electrify to close enemies.
  
• Reducing the duration bonus for roll from Ferrite Infusion from x2.5 to x2.0.
  
• Acceleration Trait is now also increasing the movement speed of the golem by 10% but the attack speed by only 15%.
  

• Projectiles would not be properly destroyed when reaching max. hits.
  
• Reverberant Potion would not drop from chests anymore, this has been fixed.
  
• There was always a trait carried over from previous runs, this has been fixed and should also fix some additional follow up bugs resulting from this.
  
• Typos
  

Greetings Adventurers!

The (hopefully) last update for the year has arrived. Its another small package with smaller improvements, item variations and new Ability options. Aside from that we also have done a technical change, upgrading the engine to Godot 4.2 and adding some additional structural changes for faster loading and better memory management.

Thank you to the community that helped to shape the game so far and helped to verify this update runs properly so short before the holiday season. Well be less active for some time starting next week, but we have quite some things prepared for next year.
More about that soon, well give you a rundown on what is coming next. For now we hope you enjoy the latest additions.


[h2]Change Log | 2023-12-14[/h2]

• Adding Twitch integration to support user votes on Abilities, Items and Traits
  
• Disabled filtering of base traits (Area, Range, Crit Chance, Crit Bonus, Force)
  

• Agony decay has been entirely removed
  
• Losing an agony level on death is still a thing
  
• Agony will increase by 1 level every 5 minutes
  
• Some of you may die, but its a sacrifice we are willing to make
  

• Updating the engine from Godot 4.1.4 to Godot 4.2
  
• Reworking data structure for faster load up speed
  
• The normal render mode will now be more performant
  
• Flash intensity scaling has been fixed and corrected for a better scale
  
• Adding an option to outline the cursor
  
• Adding additional log entries to better trace what happens during a run
  
• Performance update for summons
  

• Concentrated Strikes upgrade has been added
  
• Targets the monster with the highest Health and then spreads around it
  
• Also adds damage bonus for each elemental stack on enemies
  
• Adding quest Lightning Strikes Specialist to unlock the new upgrade
  
• New quest can be found on the Viaduct quest board
  
• Explosive strikes can now apply Burn
  
• Exploding Strikes no longer cancel out with Electrifying Strikes
  
• Base Damage of Lightning Strikes has been reduced
  
• Attack Speed and average hits per second has been increased
  
• Traits were adjusted to account for the balancing change
  
• Lightning Strikes now attack faster with higher Attack Speed to avoid Strikes being lost
  

• Arcane Elements upgrade has been added
  
• All projectiles get a random element with a 20% chance to apply elemental status effects
  
• Adding quest Arcane Splinters Specialist to unlock the new upgrade
  
• New quest can be found on the Viaduct quest board
  

• All base stat items get a new uncommon variant (Growth) which will need to be leveled and should outperform the (Boost) variant after 70-80 levels
  
• Some base items like Quickhand Gloves and Runner Shoes were improved
  
• Echoing band base range has been increased
  
• Adding uncommon Echoing Band that can trigger with magic damage
  
• Elemental Resonator was buffed
  
• Replacing previous uncommon variant to also trigger with magic attacks
  
• Adding a new uncommon variant (Chaos) that makes that every element has a chance to add any or all of every other elemental status effect
  
• Mask of Madness (Degeneration) now adding negative regeneration instead of damaging each Tick
  
• Reappearing traits after they had been banished
  

• No more negative Health (for real this time)
  
• Holy Relics Light does now count as source for Warriors Fervor
  
• Holy Relics uncommon variant now also scales with itS own light
  
• Blood Catcher (Enchantment), the temporary Attack Speed buff is now working
  
• No more potions stuck in the well, the wellkeeper threw them away
  
• If one has now all available bottles in the inventory, no more additional bottle drops
  
• Sometimes pointers to items would not disappear
  
• Scorched Slayer quest now properly shows Blazing Armor as reward
  
• Several Typos and descriptions
  
• Uncommon Shadow Cloak now spawns the correct patches giving you 30 Block Strength
  

Update: In the first upload of the patch there is a bug where no monsters spawn on agony 5, this bug has been corrected. Please restart Steam to make sure you have the fix!
Update2: Fixed the quests in the ending screen, the issues with the potion of oblivion and the normal chest not dropping uncommon variants in agony.
Update3: Fixed the "Reach Agony" quests.
Update4: Fixing FireSplinter info and Arcane Elements splinter are now also Magic.

Greetings Adventurers!
We have just updated the experimental branch of the game. Well be testing the next update until next week before setting it available for everyone. There are several technical changes in the background that may cause unforeseen problems as weve just officially upgraded the game to run on Godot 4.2, and changed some rendering and data structures.

Generally speaking, the game should load faster and perform better without any visible differences, even without performance mode on. At the same time because of these structural changes the game might be a bit unstable at the moment and we need your help to let us know about crashes and other bugs.

To join, right-click the game -> properties -> Betas and change the participation to experimental


[h2]Experimental Change Log | 2023-12-07[/h2]

• Updating the engine from Godot 4.1.4 to Godot 4.2
  
• Adding Twitch integration to support user votes on Abilities, Items and Traits
  
• Reworking data structure for faster load up speed
  
• The normal (not performance) mode is now longer rendered on higher resolution
  
• -> In normal circumstances this will be no visible change from before, the text will remain sharp, performance in normal mode will improve
  
• Agony decay has been entirely removed
  
• -> Losing an agony level on death is still a thing
  
• -> Agony will increase by 1 level every 5 minutes
  
• -> Some of you may die, but its a sacrifice we are willing to make
  
• Flash intensity setting is working again with better scaling
  
• Disabled filtering of base traits (Area, Range, Crit Chance, Crit Bonus, Force)
  
• Adding options to add an outline to the cursor
  

• Concentrated Strikes upgrade has been added
  
• Targets the monster with the highest Health and then spreads around it
  
• Also adds damage bonus for each elemental stack on enemies
  
• Adding quest Lightning Strikes Specialist to unlock the new upgrade
  
• New quest can be found on the Viaduct quest board
  
• Explosive strikes can now apply Burn
  
• Exploding Strikes no longer cancel out with Electrifying Strikes
  
• Base Damage of Lightning Strikes has been reduced
  
• Attackspeed and average hits per second has been increased
  
• Traits were adjusted to account for the balancing change
  
• Lightning Strikes now attack faster with higher Attack Speed to avoid Strikes being lost
  

• Arcane Elements upgrade has been added
  
• All projectiles get a random element with a 20% chance to apply elemental status effects
  
• Adding quest Arcane Splinters Specialist to unlock the new upgrade
  
• New quest can be found on the Viaduct quest board
  

• All base stat items get a new uncommon variant (Growth) which will need to be leveled and should outperform the (Boost) variant after 70-80 levels
  
• Some base items like Quickhand Gloves and Runner Shoes were improved
  
• Echoing band base range has been increased
  
• Adding uncommon Echoing Band that can trigger with magic damage
  
• Elemental Resonator was buffed
  
• Replacing previous uncommon variant to also trigger with magic attacks
  
• Adding a new uncommon variant (Chaos) that makes that every element has a chance to add any or all of every other elemental status effect
  

• No more negative Health (for real this time)
  
• Holy Relics Light does now count as source for Warriors Fervor
  
• Holy Relics uncommon variant now also scales with itS own light
  
• Blood Catcher (Enchantment), the temporary Attack Speed buff is now working
  
• No more potions stuck in the well, the wellkeeper threw them away
  
• If one has now all available bottles in the inventory, no more additional bottle drops
  
• Sometimes pointers to items would not disappear
  
• Scorched Slayer quest now properly shows Blazing Armor as reward
  
• Several Typos and descriptions
  

Hello Adventurers!
Over the weekend some bugs appeared that required squishing. These fixes will solve some problems you may have encountered with the latest patch. Please restart Steam in case you cant see todays date in the main menu.


[h2]Change Log | 2023-11-27[/h2]

• When swapping item versions, their counters (and accumulated buffs) were not kept.
  
• Holy Relic now heals you for the fixed 50 HP.
  
• Power ups and health pickups from items can no longer spawn out of bounds.
  
• Characters can no longer drop below 1 max. Health.
  
• Shepherds Boon bonus on full health only charges when being at full health now.
  
• The Focus variant of Shepherds boon now increases main weapon damage.
  
• The Summon Rings had a bug where the base increase of summon counts would be applied multiple times. This resulted in hundreds of minions when using the Shepherds Boon.
  
• The Brimming variant of Maidens Tear now properly adds a 60% bonus.
  
• The gem spawn positions on the Viaduct are now calculated more accurately.
  
• Wisps and Wyrms are no longer getting lost in the Frozen Depths as theyve been taught how to navigate through the passages.
  
• Wyrms on Ember Grounds are back at work.
  
• Possessed Effigy (that nice little statue ghosts on the Viaduct) have their effect on Agony reduced.
  
• Decreased the effect of monsters on Agony in general, making it decay slower.
  
• Removed all the speed modifiers from Champions.
  
• Corrected a balancing mistake with Viaduct and Frozen Depths not scaling monster spawns properly.
  

Update - Known Bugs

• Switching to uncommon variants does not carry over buff effects
  
• Holy light does not trigger Warrior's Fervour
  
• Wyrms on Ember Grounds are stuck
  

• Various performance optimizations
  
• Fixed several crash causes and improved overall stability
  

• Health potions and power ups now have simplified markers
  
• Red markers are for potions and have a max. distance of 50 meters
  
• Yellow markers are for power ups with a max. distance of 100 meters
  

• Unlocked by the existing Cleric quest Trained Cleric
  
• Includes two variants (Duality) and (Blessing)
  

Every 30s when damaged: Place Holy Light
> Heals 50HP and regenerates 0.5/s for 100s
Every 30s when full health: Drop Power Up

• Unlocked by the new Norseman quest Warriors Fervour
  
• Collect 10 Power Ups in one run.
  
• Includes two variants (Lingering) and (Potency)
  

Activates on picking up Potions or Heal Magic.
For 15s: +100% Damage & Attack Speed

• Unlocked by the new Warlock quest Horde Summoner
  
• Have 20 Summons at the same active
  
• Includes two variants (Numbers) and (Focus)
  

Per active summon: +0.10/s Regeneration
On full health, apply buff on every tick.
Tick Speed: 30s + 6s for every buff.
Buff: +5% Damage (Summon)

• Updating normal version of the item
  
• Replaced uncommon version with new variants (Passive) and (Reactive)
  

On Damaged: +3 Defense for 10s (max. 30)
On Damaged: +0.5/s Reg. for 10s (max. 5/s)
For 6s undamaged: +3% Force (max. 30%)

• Updating normal version of the item
  
• Replaced uncommon version with new variants (Champion) and (Prepared)
  

Effect triggers when an Elite or Boss appears.
For 20s: Regenerate 1%/s
Always Spawn: Health Potion
Spawn on Full Health: Power Up

• Updating normal version of the item
  
• Replaced uncommon version with new variants (Recovery) and (Unrest)
  

Accumulate 5s not moved: Heal by 1%
Full Health: +20% Attack Speed
Wounded: +20% Movement Speed

• Updating normal version of the item
  
• Replaced uncommon version with new variants (Rage) and (Undying)
  

On kill with 10% chance: +1 HP.
On full health when killing a foe:
0.4% chance for +1% Damage (Max. 50%)

• Updating normal version of the item
  
• Replaced uncommon version with new variants (Life) and (Enhancement)
  

On 200x max. HP damage dealt: +10 HP
Each time triggered: +1% to damage threshold.
On full health: +0.5% Damage (max. 50%)

• Replaced uncommon version with new variants (Capacity) and (Sacrifice)
  

Per 1 HP missing:
+0.1% Damage

• Updating normal version of the item
  
• Replaced uncommon version with new variants (Quick Charge) and (Brimming)
  

Requires to be charged. (30s)
On Hit: Negate damage, charge is used.
While charged: +30% Force & +30% Damage

• The hit rate now scales with the orb amount in the Orbit
  
• eg. with 15 orbs the hit rate is now every 0.1s instead of 0.5s for each enemy
  
• Decreasing Base Damage from 40 to 30
  
• Decreasing Material-Trait Base Damage improvement from 7 to 6
  

• Doubled health reductions
  
• Buffs reduced to 1-2%
  
• Changing ratio of buffs
  
• Damage 50%, Attack Speed 33.3%, Multistrike 16.6%
  
• Expanded description of Degeneration-Variant
  
• This variant scales with Health Regeneration
  
• Mask of Madness now lists added sum of buffs in its stats
  

• Fixed that agony rank was not decreasing on death
  
• Increasing the time before enemies reduce agony by 25%
  
• Increasing the amount by which enemies reduce agony by 400%
  
• Agony does not rubberband anymore
  

• Fixed an issue with multiple sources of invincibility affecting each other.
  
• Fixed an issue with the UI input which made it impossible to navigate to all quests with the gamepad.
  
• Moved the Ice Slayer-Quest to a new location on the quest board.
  
• Beast Huntress 2/hp per level bonus did not work, it just added 2 Max. HP in total.
  
• The Frost Trait of Frost Avalanche wasnt applying its effect.
  
• Fencer Gauntlets now do work with the Sorceress.
  
• Meteor Strikes Attack Speed is no longer extended by the attack duration.
  
• The Meteor Strike cooldown now will be displayed properly.
  
• Some Ring Blades opacity werent affected by the settings.
  
• Added a note for the Specialist quest of Phantom Needles regarding double crits.
  

Hello Adventurers!
The time has come!
During the coming days youll be able to pick the games youve enjoyed the most for the Steam Awards 2023. There will be multiple categories for which you can nominate one game you think stood out the most. It would mean the world to us if you would consider Halls of Torment for one of those categories. However, if all of your votes are spread across all the categories, our chances of being nominated will be very slim. Thats why we would like to suggest a category for Halls of Torment for your consideration.

If you want to vote for Halls of Torment for a Steam Awards nomination, we would appreciate it if you voted for it in the category Sit Back and Relax.

Other than that, we will be back with another update shortly. Until then, we hope you have a great time!

Cheers!
- Chasing Carrots

Hello Adventurers!

We have swiftly added a small fix for the "Wide Sweep" achievement.
There has been a bug since the last patch that prevented counting the hit enemies with the Swordsmen.

Thanks for the reports and your patience!

Cheers
- Chasing Carrots

[h2]Hello Adventurers![/h2]
Our work on the next playable stage goes on. To bridge the time until its release, we wanted to bring you some new items and ability upgrades. Naturally, those also come with a slew of bugfixes and minor balancing tweaks.

The most notable change is an adjustment in the Agony mechanic. Youll notice that the agony rank will increase faster. This might feel more difficult at first if you dont pay closer attention to what the changes actually entail. Previously killing monsters was the way of increasing your Agony score, while the number of monsters that are still alive contributed to how fast this score was decaying. In some cases this led to some overly dramatic rubber-banding. In order to gain more control over the Agony dynamic, the score is increased over time independent of how many kills you make. However, the Agony decay is still in place. So killing monsters fast will reduce the decay and as such contribute to the overall score increase. The score fluctuations are just not as steep as they were before.

This change will most probably require some tweaks after the fact. Let us know what you think, and we will see how we can improve it for a better experience.

There are a lot more things we have fixed and adjusted in this update. For the list of all changes, see the change log below:

[h2]Change Log | 2023-10-30[/h2]
[h3]Items[/h3]

• New item: Gorgon Mask (Head)
  
  
  • Slows down enemies in front of you.
    
  • Deals damage based on slow stacks.
    
  • Unlocked by quest: Viaduct Survivor III (Viaduct)
  
  
• New item: Mask of Madness (Head)
  
  
  • Take damage in regular intervals.
    
  • On each interval you get a permanent buff in exchange.
    
  • Unlocked by quest: Mark of Madness (Warlock)
  
  
• New item: Brokers Cape (Body)
  
  
  • Selects a random debuff from an enemy.
    
  • Tries to apply the selected debuff to all enemies in range.
    
  • Unlocked by quest: Broken Body (Cleric)
  
  
• Item Rework: Rat Ring (Ring)
  
  
  • Rats now attack the closest enemy that theyve not attacked yet.
    
  • If rats cant find a new target, they wait and then attack the previous enemy again.
    
  • Rats deal 20 physical damage to enemies they touch.
    
  • Rat Ring is now affected by summon count.
    
  • Amount of debuffs applied is now affected by Multistrike.
    
  • New uncommon variants.
  
  
• Monsters can now have slow resistance and limits on how slow they can be.
  
  
  • Resistance: champion (25%), elite (50%), boss (66%), lord (80%)
    
  • Limit: champion (30%), elite, boss, lord (50%)
  
  
• Its more likely now to get uncommon variants of items that the character has equipped.
  
  
  • The probability factor is distributed equally among all equipped items.
    
  • The probability factor considers the amount of unlocked items and is increased accordingly.
  
  
• Polish: Ring summons are now listed below the item stats.
  
• Polish: Summon rings now have better icons in the info area.
  
• Bugfix: Ring summons will now despawn when rings are unequipped.
  
• Bugfix: Ring summons now have correct summon count limits on re-equipping.
  
• Bugfix: Summoned skeleton mage attacks now also count towards summon damage.
  
• Bugfix: Certain summon counts were not accounted for.
  

• New ability upgrade: Phantom Fetter (Phantom Needles)
  
  
  • Unlocked by new quest: Phantom Needles Specialist (Viaduct)
    
  • Quest requirement: 10 000 double crits in a run with Phantom Needles
    
  • Slows enemies on hit.
    
  • Gets additional crit chance based on the slow stacks on the hit enemy.
  
  
• New ability upgrade: Orbital Shift (Astronomers Orbs)
  
  
  
  • Unlocked by new quest: Astronomers Orbs Specialist (Viaduct)
    
  • Quest requirement: Hit 40 000 enemies in a run with Astronomers Orbs
    
  • Orbs change distance from the player, forming a rotating ellipse.
    
  • Orbs deal damage based on the relative distance to the player.
  
  
• New ability upgrade: Amputation (Transfixion)
  
  
  
  • Unlocked by new quest: Transfixion Specialist (Archer)
    
  • Quest requirement: Apply 150 000 debuff stacks with Transfixion
    
  • Enemies take 10% bonus damage per debuff stack on them.
    
  • Adds an additional Transfixion emitter.
  
  
• Transfixion balancing:
  
  
  
  • Reduced base damage from 80 to 70.
    
  • Increased the multiplier for multi enemy hits from 66% to 75%.
    
  • Decreased the base damage from deadliness trait from 15 to 10.
  
  
• New trait: Crippling Strikes
  
  
  
  • Increases slow chance by 15%
    
  • 3 levels (10, 20, 35)
    
  • Unlocks with the new quest Crippling Strikes on the Viaduct quest board
  
  
• Polish: Swapped places of quests on the Viaduct quest board.
  

• Agony decay from monsters now starts after a delay.
  
  
  • Default delay is 10s. Stronger enemies or enemies that spawn further away have a higher delay.
    
  • Enables slower starting builds or builds that need monsters closer to not lose Agony as long as they can keep up with the normal spawn rate.
  
  
• Agony is now generated over time instead of killing monsters.
  
  
  • Earliest possibly Agony rank ups are every 4 minutes with Agony 5 being achievable at 20 minutes in.
    
  • Each Agony rank now requires the same amount of points to reach.
    
  • There is a small buffer beyond Agony 5 to not directly fall below Agony 5 if the killing speed dips for a moment.
  
  
• Agony still decreases on revive, a revive now decreases Agony by 1 rank.
  
• Agony scaling has been adjusted so that Agony 5 difficulty is similar on each stage.
  
  
  • Adding damage scaling for all stages (stronger on lower stages) -> 2.5% - 10% per Agony level
    
  • Increased monster health scaling on lower Agony ranks.
    
  • Increased XP and gold drop scaling on lower Agony ranks.

• Auto aim now works for all characters on most of the visible screen space.
  
• Fixed name of Reverberant Bottle item (wrongly labeled Memorizing Bottle)
  
• Uncommon Firewalker Boots now give 1.0m/s base speed increase (previously 0.5m/s)
  
• Profile restoration is performed at game start when a corrupted profile has been detected.
  
• Adjusted ability descriptions
  
• Ring of Frost description stated wrong frost chance on hit (its 15% not 10%)
  
• Meteor Strike main projectiles were not affected by most Meteor Strike upgrades
  
• Hailstorm changes:
  
  
  • Traits now properly display they are associated with Hailstorm.
    
  • Increased satellite drop base damage from 200 to 500.
    
  • Increased satellite drop direct damage area radius from 3m to 4m.
    
  • Increased movement speed factor from x0.2 to x0.3.
    
  • Increased trigger distance of vortex and spikes from 2m to 2.5m.
    
  • Reduced base force of vortex from 100 to 75.
    
  • Reduced emit count from Eyes trait from +0.33 base to +0.3 base.
    
  • Added a movement speed factor reduction of base x0.05 to the Wind trait.
    
  • Changed Updraft trait base damage from flat +40 to 30%.
    
    
    • This means 40 -> 150 for the satellite drops
      
    • This means 40 -> 30 for the spikes

• Weve done some under-the-hood performance optimizations. Theres still room for improvement and well keep on working on that front.

[h2]Hello Adventurers![/h2]
Thanks for reporting all the issues with the latest patch.
We have fixed the most important bugs.

This should also recover save games in many cases.
To make sure the save game loading is working properly, restart Steam if it was open since the update of yesterday.

If there are still issues left, please let us know. If you want to manually check your save files, you can do that here:

• Cloud: https://store.steampowered.com/account/remotestorageapp/?appid=2218750
  
• Windows: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\\2218750\remote
  
• Linux: \userdata\\2218750\remote
  

• Hailstorm spikes got adjustment to improve performance
  
  
  
  • Increased base damage
    
  • Lower spawn rate
    
  • Shorter duration
    
  • Delayed spawns
    
  • Increased area for spikes
  
  
• Hailstorm Updraft trait got the base damage increased from 10 to 40

• In some cases save files were lost, they should be back now
  
  
  
  • A restart of the Steam environment or the device (Steamdeck) might be needed.
    
  • If you still have problems with your current profile, we recommend restoring the most recent profile backup in the profile menu.
    
  
  
• Uncommon Berserker Boots do now use the new icon.
  
• Arcane Rift got its blast animation back.
  
• Hailstorm spikes visibility can now be adjusted through the ability visibility.
  
• Game got stuck when opening the Steam Overlay.
  
• Hail Storm quests are now properly unhidden, when adjacent quests have been completed.
  

[h2]Hello Adventurers![/h2]
As were continuing our work on further content for Halls of Torment, we wanted to slot in a smaller bug fixing patch. This includes fixes for a couple of oversights weve had in abilities, traits, and quests.

Weve also added a second frost based ability called Hail Storm. The balance in elemental damage sources was a little off with only one frost based ability, so we felt like this would make the selection of abilities more rounded.

Were also looking into items in general. Our plan is to slowly improve on our items throughout future updates, and make more different item combinations viable for your character builds. As a small peek into those changes weve reworked the Blazing Shell armor. Additionally to its burn on player hit function, it now burns enemies in closer range to the player in given time intervals.

This is a rather small patch, and we know that you are patiently awaiting further content updates. We are working on those, but some types of content require more time than others. For example, we cannot ship a level before its finished in its entirety (monsters, bosses, and all that comes with them). That would hardly be an enjoyable piece of content. So entire levels are expected to take longer, while new abilities and items can be added on a more regular basis. That said, please expect upcoming updates to be a little bit further apart than the previous patches.

And here are the changes:

[h2]Change Log | 2023-10-16[/h2]
[h3]Features[/h3]

• New frost based ability: Hail Storm
  
• Reworked Item: Blazing Shell. It now burns enemies in the players vicinity and additionally when the player gets hit by an enemy.
  

• Added class specific icons for proficient stance traits.
  
• Added missing icon for Frost Affinity trait.
  
• Added missing icons for Elemental Surge traits.
  
• Added missing icons for Berserker Boots and Ring of Ice items
  
• Added voice sounds for Lord of Pain.
  
• Phantom Needles stats got extended.
  
• Phantom Rift Area can now be upgraded.
  
• Astronomers Orbs stats got finished up.
  

• Tome of Mastery can handle Ability upgrades and fallback options (Alms and Health) correctly
  
• Elite beasts in Frozen Depths have now normal elite HP
  
• Fixed piercing on bullets and chain lightning
  
• Transfixion has been partly counted as physical/main weapon, not anymore.
  
• Sometimes when players picked up multiple overlapping items on the floor, only one of them actually got registered while all others have been ignored (and deleted).
  
• Arcane Splinter force now properly affects the duration of the bullets, especially fading was fixed
  
• Phantom Needles and Kugelblitz are now properly affected by Multistrike
  
• Longliving Quest reward unlock description fixed from "Duration" to "Force" blessing
  
• Stat tooltips now show proper format for additive mods. Also, stats now are more precise.
  
• Some minor stability fixes under the hood.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented stat changes on cascading effects (like bullets spawning bullets). This also affected the proper display of certain ability stats (e.g. Meteor Strike).
  
• Fixed a bug that some Effect on Hit modifiers would show 0% chance in stats.
  
• Phantom Needles and Kugelblitz showed wrong attack speed stats.
  
• Sorceress no longer gets range traits shown per default.
  
• Archer now has range traits per default.
  
• Settings Menu: Ability Effect Opacity slider was not accessible via gamepad.
  

[h2]Hello Adventurers![/h2]
In this new patch weve tackled a couple of problems with the way information about your character was displayed in the UI. The way weve gathered attribute data until now was rather basic and limited. That also applied to how the data was converted into readable format. Weve done another refactoring pass in that system and added more information to every (or at least most) entity that exposes attributes to the stats display. We hope that this will bring some more clarity, for example when it comes to figuring out what effect the Force stat has on different Abilities.



Another important addition is the new profile management UI. You can access it from the main menu while being at the campfire. Weve received numerous reports of players losing their entire progress and we were not able to pinpoint the problem. Our best guess is that under certain conditions there is a failure during cloud synchronization.



Thats why from now on the game will make a daily backup of your current profile (stored in separate files). All those backups are shown in a list in the profile tab of the main menu. In this menu you will be able to delete particular backups or restore them as your current profile. Your current progress is shown at the very top of that view. This is also where you can reset your profile, in case you want a fresh start. Dont worry, we have a confirmation dialog in place that ensures you wont erase your profile unless you really want to.

Those are the two biggest topics of this patch. There have been a lot more changes, predominantly bug fixes, that are listed below:

[h2]Change Log | 2023-09-21[/h2]
[h3]Features[/h3]

• Refactored display of stats in character sheet and "Traits & Abilities" section
  
  
  
  • stats are displayed in a more dynamic manner: weapons and items are displayed in separate categories
    
  • Most stats of abilities are now displayed properly
    
  • Stat labels are more context sensitive, e.g. it is shown which attributes are affected by Force
    
  • (Some stats might still be missing and should be added later on)
  
  
• Profile containing game progress is backed up once a day
  
  
• Added profile management menu which allows you to:
  
  
  
  • Browse and restore profile backups
    
  • Reset your current progress (if you want a fresh start)

• Names of ability upgrades are listed in ability tooltips
  
• upgraded abilities are marked with chevrons in the HUD
  

• allows you to pick any ability from the pool of all available abilities
  
• replaces initial ability scrolls in all stages
  

• further reduced agony score ceiling in Frozen Depths so Agony V is achievable
  

• improved contrast of bright purple enemy projectiles against bright backgrounds
  
• increased sprite contrast of red and blue burning skull monsters
  

• Fixed "get xp while closing" exploit in chest UI.
  
• Fixed input issue caused when first time selecting a character using the keyboard.
  
• Fixed a bug that would give all enemies a 100% damage buff.
  
• Fixed a bug with modifier categories that caused modifiers to affect abilities they shouldn't apply to.
  
• Flame Strike heatup traits applied burn chance modifiers the wrong way.
  
• Kugelblitz crit chance traits now affect the lightning from the High Voltage upgrade.
  
• Frost affinity corrected text "frost damage" to "ice damage".
  
• changed frost avalanche "attraction" traits pushback force from -20 to -30.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused ballistic bullets to fly way too fast.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused electrified orb damage not being updated on movement speed changes.
  
• Shieldmaiden's "stalwart dedication" now restores health when max health is increased.
  

• Fixed prelude savegame format so import function in full game works again.
  
• (Start the prelude once to update the savegame before importing)
  

Greetings!
Today we want to tackle a couple of more technical issues of Halls of Torment. For this weve built the game with an updated version of the Godot engine. This update should fix a lot of crashes caused by Vulkan API errors. Since this engine version hasnt been thoroughly tested, yet, and there might be some other changes that have an impact on the game as a whole, we decided to take a more cautious approach and release it on an experimental branch first.

If you had a lot of problems with crashes in the past and would like to see if they are solved with those newly introduced changes, were inviting you to check out the experimental branch on Steam and see if there are fewer problems than before (hopefully none!). Please note that things might break with an experimental build like this and new unexpected bugs might occur.

If you decide to give it a go, please share your experience with us, and let us know if anything breaks for you. We would appreciate any feedback that helps us to improve Halls of Torment.

This is how you access the experimental branch:

• right-click Halls of Torment in your Steam library
  
• click Properties
  
• in the left bar of the Properties window select Betas
  
• under Private Betas enter the following beta access code: experimental
  
• Click Check Code
  
• Click on the Opt in button that appears
  
• Wait for the game to update
  

[h2]Hello Adventurers![/h2]
Before we proceed to the most recent patch notes we would like to spotlight a little collaboration weve struck up with Blobfish, the makers of Brotato. Weve put both our games together in a delightful bundle called Hot Potatoes. So if you recommend Halls of Torment to your pals, or in case youre reading this without having bought the game, yet, consider the Hot Potatoes bundle!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/34876/HoT_Potatoes/

[h2]The Patch[/h2]
In this patch were introducing two major changes to Halls of Torment: The first is a buff to the Spirit Warrior ability. The second is an information display in the campfire character selection that shows all major stats of each playable character. We hope to reduce a little bit of initial friction for players who start playing a character they are unfamiliar with.

We are aware of other areas where stats and values still arent clearly communicated and we are working on those. Were planning to add more transparency as we continue with the development, and we hope that we can introduce those improvements very soon.

Additionally, there have been plenty of smaller fixes and adjustments across different areas of the game. For a detailed list of changes, as always, have a look below:

[h2]Change Log | 2023-09-13[/h2]

• Spirit Warrior
  
  
  • Buffed melee attack
    
  • Buffed dash attack
    
  • Added stun effect to dash
  
  
• UI
  
  
  • Added a character description panel at the campfire
    
  • Added ability description in "Traits and Abilities" screen
    
  • Increased size of right panel HUD tooltip
    
  • Increased size of inventory item tooltips
  
  
• Difficulty
  
  
  • Agony champion projectiles are slower now and shouldn't off-screen the player so often
    
  • Shadow Cloak: uncommon version got buffed
    
  • Frost Avalanche: Increased direct damage from 25 to 50
    
  • Reduced the Agony score cap in Frozen Depths. It hasnt been adjusted after rebalancing monsters.
    
  • First champions do now spawn after 90 seconds to avoid clashing with regular 2nd monster wave elites.
  
  
• Bugfixes & Typos
  
  
  • Fixed missing ingredient indicators on Gatherer's Charm (e.g. Dragon Nettle)
    
  • In some trait descriptions regeneration modifiers weren't described properly
    
  • Shadow Cloak: block strength in description now fits the actually applied block strength
    
  • Fixed typos in quest descriptions
    
  • Spirit Warrior: it is now possible to select a second ability upgrade after picking up trait VI
    
  • OnHit chance stats of abilities are now displayed as chance percentages instead of flat values
    
  • Flame Strike: typo in ability tags
    
  • Ring of Thunder & Ring of Frost: fixed typos in descriptions
    
  • "Purification" traits of Cleric have been fixed: areas and ranges were too low
    
  • "Voltage IV" trait fixed, now only triggers electrify on critical hit
    
  • "Summon Golem" - Magma Fists was missing "fire" and "burn" tags
    
  • Beast Huntress level 60 quest now yields a gold reward
    
  • Clerics movement speed was slightly to low, its now corrected to 4.5m/s
    
  • Beast Huntress had the physical tag instead of the elemental tag on her spear
    
  • Maidens Tear would make you invincible on unequip when it was fully charged.
    
  • There was falsely a Wraith Guard champion in the Frozen Depths, its now a Snow Effigy.

[h2]Hello Adventurers![/h2]
This is the second smaller patch in the series of patches after the Frozen Depths update. While addressing further issues that have been pointed out to us, weve followed the discourse in the forums closely and of course played the game a lot ourselves. It was to be expected that for some players the difficulty reduction would render the game too easy. Others welcomed the change and of course we understand that we wont be able to satisfy every single one of you just by tweaking the difficulty back and forth.

However, we have to point out that we always need to balance the progression as a whole. If you have everything unlocked (particularly the new class marks) naturally the game will be much easier for you even in the currently final stage. Keep in mind at which point Frozen Depths get unlocked. You can enter the stage after defeating the second boss of the Forgotten Viaduct. Each time we add a new stage, we move the goalpost in a way that doesnt feel challenging for players who already have 100% of the content unlocked. But we need to make sure that players who follow a natural progression (i.e. when the game leaves Early Access) dont hit a brick wall.

Frozen Depths is not the final stage. We have more content planned, and we also have a concept for the late game, which should allow challenge-driven players to ramp up the difficulty to their liking, while it doesnt make other players feel like they have to take on those challenges. But this is an entire feature for a later bigger update. For now we will stick to improving the game where it still feels rough until were ready to add new content.

That being said, here is the list of changes for this patch. Its focussed on improving the game feel of the Beast Huntress and her hound. There also have been some other minor tweaks, like small balancing adjustments in the Frozen Depths based on our own playthroughs and improvements in visibility.

[h2]Change Log | 2023-09-07[/h2]

• Summons in general
  
  
  
  • fixed floaty movement behaviour by adjusting mass/movement speed ratio
    
  
  
• Beast Huntress
  
  
  
  • improved game feel
    increased attack speed
    proportionately lowered damage and frost chance
    improved projectile visuals
    
  • Hound
    
    
    
    • increased attack speed
      
    • reduced damage proportionately
      
    • Hound will choose targets that are closest to the Beast Huntress instead of its own position
      
    • increased aggro range and movement speed
      
    • changed attack to a circular emitter in front of the Hound
      
    • added a better visual effect and sounds for the attack
      
  
  
• Norseman
  
  
  
  • added missing description of Frost Nova ability
    
  
  
• Visibility
  
  
  
  • Player's Frost Avalanche ability effects have been moved below characters sprites and enemy projectiles.
    
  • Enemies' frost avalanche effects have a higher contrast and stand out more against the frozen depth background.
    
  • Ability opacity setting now also affects Shadow Cloak, Arcane Rift areas, Arcane Rift Splinters, and Ringblades.
    
  
  
• Ember Grounds tweaks
  
  
  
  • minor adjustments in XP distribution during early waves
    
  • slightly increased pickups in stage
    
  • slightly increased health values of some enemies
    
  
  
• Bugfixes
  
  
  
  • Spirit Warrior falsely reacted to "+Spawn" modifiers, which was unintended.
    

[h2]Hello Adventurers![/h2]
After last weeks update many players expressed their discontent with the changes weve introduced and with some of the new content weve added. Weve gone through many forum posts, collected your feedback, and took a closer look at the current state of the game. We realize there are many other players who enjoy the new update, but it is clear to us that we need to readjust a lot of things in order to make the game fun again for those who arent happy with the changes.

To achieve this we want to take a more careful approach. Our plan is to release several patches in smaller increments and keep in touch with the community to make sure that our direction aligns with your expectations. We will try to keep the time between the next couple of smaller updates short and react to your feedback in between.

The most common complaint was the increased difficulty, especially in the new stage, Frozen Depths. In order to relieve some of the frustration, weve reduced enemy health and damage values for a less punishing experience. The difficulty in the other stages hasnt changed much since the previous (non-beta) update, but we noticed a couple of outlier values that needed some tweaking, so there have been minor changes as well (specifically too high projectile damage values e.g. in Ember Grounds).

Weve also added two new QoL features. You can rebind keyboard keys for movement and aim actions in the settings menu. If you struggle with visibility due to too many ability effects on the screen, you can now set the opacity of ability effects as well.

[h2]Change Log | 2023-09-05[/h2]

• Settings
  
  
  
  • added configurable keyboard bindings
    
  • added opacity setting for player ability effects
    
  
  
• Difficulties of Ember Grounds and Forgotten Viaduct
  
  
  
  • reduced damage dealt by enemies with special movement patterns or high movement speed
    
  • reduced damage from enemy projectiles
    
  
  
• Frozen Depths Difficulty
  
  
  
  • reduced damage dealt by regular enemies
    
  • reduced health of regular enemies
    
  • increased enemy spawn count for regular enemies
    
  • reduced agony decrease rate on each enemy, since monsters take longer to reach the player's screen edge on Frozen Depths
    
  
  
• Frozen Depth Bosses
  
  
  
  • reduced trigger distance for ranged attacks to avoid player getting off-screened
    
  • made projectile based attack patterns of bosses less frustrating
    
    
    
    • slower movement
      
    • less dense patterns
      
    • smaller damage areas
    
    
  • increased size of hit areas (the ones that receive damage, not the ones that deal damage)
    
  • Bugfixes
    
  • fixed a bug that caused frost effects to trigger every frame forever once their timer has run out
    
  
  

• adjust Beast Huntress and Hound AI
  
• improve information on character stats
  
• adjust Spirit Warrior ability
  
• address various bugs, typos, and missing assets
  
• improve enemy projectile visibility in Frozen Depths
  
• fix bugs in agony champions
  

Hello Adventurers!

Its time for an update! Those of you who have played on the beta branch will have seen most of the changes already. But there are a couple of new things in this update that didnt debut on the beta branch. And of course weve also fixed some bugs that popped up during beta testing.

Highlights of this update are the two new characters: the Norseman and the Beast Huntress. Both feature ice based attacks, each in a different and unique way. In addition to this we have a couple of new abilities for you to try out. Two of them, the Ice Avalanche and the Flame Strike were playable in the beta version. But weve added two more: the Arcane Rift and the Spirit Warrior. Were sure youll find something new in here that fits your combat preferences.

Without further ado, heres a list of all the bigger changes. Please keep in mind that there might be some overlap between this list and the ones from previous beta updates.

[h2]Change Log | 2023-08-31[/h2]
[h3]FEATURES[/h3]

• New feature: Class Marks
  
  
  
  • Class Marks allow you to pick traits from a different class
    
  • To unlock a class mark you will need to finish the class master quests.
    
  • Those quests require you to reach agony IV on the character's stage of origin.
    
  • These quests superseed the character quests to reach level 100.
    
  • If you have already completed the level 100 quests those quests will be set as completed.
    
  
  
• New feature: Agony Mode
  
  
  
  • Agony Mode can be unlocked by defeating the Lord of a stage.
    
  • Monster count, monster health, and XP drops are dynamically scaled based on your performance
    
  • Each killed enemy increases agony, while monsters that are alive reduce agony over time.
    
  • Aside from monsters, only reviving reduces agony.
    
  • You may find Uncommon Items: stronger variations of items that youve retrieved previously
    
  • Additional champion monsters are spawning
    
  • Champions are randomized monsters with extra modifiers and abilities.
    
  • Champions can drop various rewards from ability scrolls, to uncommon items, gold, flasks, or an extra bucket for the well.
    
  
  
• New stage: Frozen Depths
  
  
  
  • Can be unlocked by defeating the frost knight on the Forgotten Viaduct.
    
  • New unknown enemies await with 3 unique bosses and a new lord.
    
  • The stage layout limits your movement and requires you to navigate carefully through the caves while avoiding getting encircled by foes.
    
  
  
• New elemental effect: Frost
  
  
  
  • Frost explodes and deals damage in an area when the affected monster dies or 20 stacks have been accumulated.
    
  • If the frost effect runs out it triggers with only half of its damage.
    
  • Frost deals damage based on the number of stacks.
    
  • The strongest hit that applied frost determines the area of the effect.
    
  
  
• New characters
  
  
  
  • Norseman
    
    
    
    • Dual wielding axe fighter boosting your physical abilities.
      
    • When he hits a certain number of enemies he unleashes a devastating Frost Nova.
    
    
  • Beast Huntress
    
    
    
    • Throws her spear with great force, piercing through the enemy lines and applying frost effect.
      
    • Has a hound that protects her from close enemies.
    
    
  
  
• New abilities
  
  
  
  • Ice Avalanche: an ice based attack with a diagonal pattern.
    
  • Flame Strike: close quarter defense or boss killer.
    
  • Arcane Rift: magic mines that deal devastating damage.
    
  • Spirit Warrior: summoned warrior that dashes through enemies.
    
  • Potion of Renewal: allows you to reroll abilities
    
  • Hallucinogenic Elixir: allows you to reroll items in a chest
    

• All final stage bosses have lower health but they increase in difficulty over time.
  
• Potion of Oblivion now allows you to banish a trait without closing the trait selection.
  
• Discarding all items in a chest gives you XP worth 50% of your current total XP bar.
  
• You can now discard all abilities from a Scroll of Mastery which will also give you 50% XP of your current total XP bar.
  
• Some fixes regarding item and monster positioning in level geometry
  
• Picking up quest items or ingredients will show a short text telling you what youve picked up
  
• Potion quantities have been adjusted (max amount and bottles)
  
• Many more tweaks, adjustments, and bug fixes that would either go beyond the scope of this post or we didnt track properly.
  
• Retrieving potion bottles doesnt use up the well any longer. Also, when you survive a run, all bottles in your bag will be automatically added to your potions (no purchase necessary).
  

Greetings Champions!

First of all, thank you so much! Without you we couldnt have advanced with Halls of Torment as we did. Over 500 000 players have played the game and each week more are coming. Your support, your feedback, and your participation in the beta means a lot to us. It allows us to improve the game every day and bring new and interesting content.

Since yesterday, there is the Tiny Teams Event that focuses on small teams just like us. We are having a 20% discount during this event, and if you want to help us, tell your friends about us. But maybe you want to help more tiny teams and explore hidden gems? Visit the Tiny Teams Festival!

https://store.steampowered.com/sale/tinyteamsfestival2023



Why is this important? The key point is diversity in the games market. Over 95% of all indie games never turn a profit. Small Indie devs often come by with contract work or work full-time jobs in order to finance their game development. If you want to see more games made by people who deeply care about them, browse through the festival and give those devs some of your attention. The organizers stream games 12 hours a day. This is a perfect place to find your next potential purchase.

Were sure youll encounter some very interesting games, only few people have heard about.

Anyway, if you want to follow our latest updates, then visit the forums!
https://steamcommunity.com/app/2218750/discussions/3/3801652762283956029/

[h3]Have a nice weekend, whatever you do!
- Chasing Carrots[/h3]

Greetings Brave Souls!

We are ready to deploy a new build on the beta branch. This will be the base for the first big Halls of Torment update. Please be aware that this update is still under development. Most features are not yet finished, require further tuning or may change entirely.
Well give a short overview of the most important points. Generally while you will see wonky graphics or missing content, everything that has been included should be working. If you are finding any bugs or have any feedback, please visit either the Steam Forums or our official Discord.

More information & how to join: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2218750/view/3649655808283204317


[h2]Frozen Depths[/h2]
The new Stage can be unlocked by beating the Frost Knight on the Forgotten Viaduct. Youve done that already? Great! You can jump right into action. The Frozen Depths are a system of caves that can be tricky to navigate through and are the core of the new update. New enemies and challenges will await you with many new unlocks once they are ready.
While the stage is fully functional, aside from some monsters using dirty recolored sprites, the unlockable content is still to be done. This includes Blessings, new Traits, one of the new characters etc.


[h2]Norseman[/h2]
Can be unlocked through the Frozen Depths, a character focussing on quick melee attacks. The basic work is done and all Traits and attacks are as they should be. Missing are his quests, including all coming unlocks, especially new items that will be there for Synergies between his base play style.
Also the Ability that will accompany him is still to be done.


[h2]Character #9[/h2]
She will be coming in the next few weeks. She will be a huntress with a loyal beast on her side and ranged Ice attacks.


[h2]Flame Strike & Frost Avalanche[/h2]
We added two new base abilities that will be unlocked, once you can finish the quest to survive 8 minutes in the Ember Grounds. Both abilities are fully functional and we await feedback about them! Frost Avalanche is the base Ice Ability, starting with a diagonal attack pattern while the Flame Strike is a close range, single target, high damage skill. Both abilities will get visual upgrades further down the line.


[h2]Agony[/h2]
Agony is but the first step in making the game more challenging. It will start out just as the normal game and scales up based on your performance. When Agony mode is active following things will happen:

• Randomized Champions will spawn and drop additional loot
  
• Health and Enemy amount are increasing based on performance
  
• Increased Gold rewards
  

• Gold rewards when dying/winning now depend on the stage.
  
• All lords now work by getting stronger over time and having reduced Health pools.
  
• Reroll potions for abilities and items have been added.
  
• Characters now get automatically some stats every level (defensive) / 10 levels (offensive).
  
• Characters have more traits now that benefit specific play styles.
  
• General balancing work on abilities and characters.
  
• Piercing and Duration have been replaced by Force, which also boosts Knockback of melee attacks.
  
• Item Balancing - Most items have seen a boost in strength.
  
• All damage effects are now limited to 20 stacks. They trigger damage when trying to apply once again.
  
• Fixing several smaller and bigger bugs.
  

[h2]Greetings Champions![/h2]

Its time for another small update. As we said in our last update, wed still like to start the beta in July, which we will do just right in time on Monday the 31st July. Today we want to talk about how you can participate in the update beta and what to expect. If things are unclear, please let us know.


[h3]Joining the Beta[/h3]
You can freely join the Beta, by going into your games properties from the Steam library (right-click the game or manage). There will be a page called Betas where you can set the game version you want to play on.

You can freely switch between the live and beta version, but switching back to the live version might remove some progress from the save game. But usually the unlocked progress will simply not be available in previous versions (new stages, characters, items etc.)


[h3]Contents & State of the Beta[/h3]
When you join the beta, be aware that most features are not complete and content will get added over time. While most of the foundations are done and the addition of new parts will be quick, there are some points to be aware of.

• Assets are not final and some content will be using place holders (enemies, items, abilities)
  
• Not all quests and unlocks will be added.
  
• Unlocks bound to quests will automatically be available once the content gets added.
  
• Content and balancing might be vastly reworked during the beta as many content items have not been tested in depth.
  
• The beta is not feature complete, additional features will be finished during the beta.
  

• New stage Frozen Depths
  
• Agony game mode (not final yet)
  
• Balancing changes to characters, traits, items and abilities
  
• Up to 2 of the 4 new abilities.
  
• 1 of the 2 new characters.
  
• Many smaller changes and additions
  
• Stability updates & engine upgrade
  

[h2]Hello Adventurers![/h2]

Here is a small summary of the past week's progress. Weve taken slightly longer than anticipated, but wed still like to start the beta for that patch within July. The release of the update is to be expected in August. The beta will not start with the full content, but with everything thats been finished at that time.

So what were the biggest changes weve been working on in the past weeks?
Note: Details in screenshots and information might change, everything is WIP


[h2]Frozen Depths[/h2]


The Frozen Depths are the 4th stage that will be available. Following the previous stages, this stage will become harder and more complex. As the name suggests, the stage is going to be freezing cold, as will be the included new mechanics and enemies.



We had to make monster AI a bit smarter in order for it to navigate through a cave-like system. The cave structure will not only limit your movement, it will also enable you to plan ahead on how and where to engage enemies. Its our first approach to more complex level layouts. To not make things more interesting, we are also going to add a few new behaviours and patterns to enemies!



Besides some new cold hearted enemies, well also introduce the ice element with new abilities and characters. But those are not ready for the beta test, yet. Just this much: Ice will not slow down enemies :)


[h2]Agony[/h2]


Agony is the first step of many to add new challenges and difficulties to the game. We had to rework some systems internally to make the monsters and spawning more flexible. This limited the amount of work we could get done on this front. For now Agony will be a simple toggle in the Register of Halls that can be enabled if you have defeated the Lord of the Hall.



With raising agony, champion enemies with some additional mobs will appear. The champions are randomized encounters that appear more frequent and grow stronger the better you play. Champions have special modifiers, making them shoot fireballs or use abilities, sometimes being simply stronger or faster. Those champions will reward you with additional drops of items, abilities and gold.

But champions are not the only new challenge. All enemies will grow more resilient and in numbers with a higher agony rating. To raise the agony, one simply needs to slay many monsters as quickly as possible!


[h2]Balancing[/h2]


Player characters are undergoing some changes right now. Especially early characters will be refitted with new traits so they follow the trait patterns of later characters. They will receive more general usage traits that dont focus on the main attack only. In the future, every character and ability will have a crit bonus value above 0, which means that they can all crit and critical hits can be more universally used. Also in the works are boni on level ups depending on the player character, like for example 5 max health per level, or a heal effect on each level up. In the future we want to expand on this, so it can go beyond simple passive stat boosts.



Furthermore, hit effects will get a couple of changes. Debuff effects will be toned down from 10% to 5% while all elemental effects will be capped to stacks of 20. Burn was already limited, but Electrify will now be limited as well. In exchange for this, when applying another elemental effect stack, the stack will deal direct damage and reset all timers which allows for better damage upscaling.

The last thing regarding elemental damage is that buffs that were increasing elemental damage will now affect the damage effects instead of the direct damage. For example, Fire Blessing will from now on increase the strength of the burn effect instead of the direct fire damage dealt.



The bonus XP from completed quests is being rebalanced as well. The XP boost was rather strong and we will be adding more and more quests, so over time well have to reduce the bonus you gain from quests. With this update we are doing the first step with a reduction to 0.33% per quest.


[h2]Other Changes[/h2]

There are many other changes, smaller and bigger ones, that will have an impact on how the game plays.

Force will be introduced as a new stat value, replacing pierce and duration, combining them into a single stat. Force will also be used to increase knockback from melee attacks and to mitigate damage reduction of projectiles when piercing enemies. It may also apply to some more exotic stats in the future, but those will be denoted in respective descriptions. Duration buffs will all be changed to force buffs, the trait Piercing Wind has been changed to add a base crit bonus to all characters and abilities.



Wordings for effects are going to be unified. When releasing into early access, we had no unified system for how to describe how values affect character stats and it wasnt always clear whether modifiers were multiplicative or additive. In the future additive bonuses will always include the keyword base and be non-% values, while all %-values will be added up and used as a multiplier on the base values.



There are 2 new potions coming up: one to reroll items and one to reroll abilities. Those are still WIP in terms of unlocking, but they are functional in the game.



The Lords of Ember Grounds and the Viaduct will be changed to have less health and scale in difficulty as time passes, just as the Lord of Pain in the first level. The additional projectiles and indestructible guards will no longer be valid targets for abilities and auto-aim.



Weve upgraded the Godot Engine to version 4.1. This includes many potential fixes for various engine level issues. It will not fix everything and we are expecting more work to be done. But the engine upgrade will also enable us to further optimize the game in the future.
A big Thank You to all the Godot Collaborators developing and maintaining the engine!



Please note that all the above is work in progress and we continue to add more content. Its just a short overview of what weve done during the past few weeks. Once we can ensure a stable beta, were going to make it available for everyone who wants to give us feedback while the work on the next proper update continues.

Have a nice week!
Chasing Carrots

[h2]Hello all![/h2]

Short update to fix two issues.
First of the Arcane Charging I trait has a proper description now.

But more importantly, the Potion of Oblivion had a bug that when banishing a sub group of traits, it did in fact not banish anything at all. This was fixed and if you banish now a trait from one group, eg. "Arcane Splinter I (Charging)", it should ban all (Charging) traits.

Thanks for the reports.

[h3]Cheers
- Chasing Carrots[/h3]

[h2]Hello Adventurers![/h2]

We hope you have a lot of fun down in the Halls of Torment. Before moving on to adding new halls, abilities, and playable characters, we wanted to clean up a couple of things and add a sorely missed feature: trait rerolls and banishes. Those will be added in the form of a new NPC which weve already covered in our previous Dev Journal.

Besides that, we took some time to fix some issues and usability inconveniences. We are aware of more problems that still arent fixed, yet, and we keep on working on solutions for those. Your feedback is, as always, very appreciated. We want to thank you for supporting us and helping out by reporting problems you encounter.


[h2]Change Log | 2023-06-27[/h2]
[h3]FEATURES[/h3]

• New NPC: Cupbearer!
  
• Quest to rescue the Cupbearer
  
• The trait selection can have Reroll, Banish, Memorize, and Double Potions
  
• Collect ingredients to unlock all the potions
  
• Collect bottles to increase the amount of each potion
  
• New Item: Gatherers Charm (automatically acquired when Cupbearer has been rescued)
  
• for more details see our Dev Journal #4
  

• Item pickup from chests is more intuitive now. The new item will be equipped when the slot is unoccupied, otherwise it will be put into the bag. When the bag is also full, the player first has to make space or discard the chest items.
  
• Improved Golem roll and attack behavior
  
• Improved Imp and Skeleton Summons movement speed and steering
  
• Wraith lance attacks will also play a sound now (Lord of Despair and Wraith Horseman)
  
• Ability Scrolls in the world are sometimes guarded by an elite monster
  
• Performance with lots of XP Gems lying around should now be way better. There should also be no massive slowdowns when picking up a Hand of Greed anymore.
  
• Integrated Godot delta smoothing for smother gameplay when the game runs at the vsync limit
  
• Item well state (retrieved, owned, etc.) is not displayed if the Wellkeeper has not been rescued.
  
• Invocators Grasp got its own item graphic.
  
• Removed some very loud low frequencies in Exterminators fire sound which caused some players to complain about its loudness.
  
• Better sound for breaking pots on Ember Grounds.
  
• Improved death animation of Gargoyles.
  

• Added an error message to the start of the game when Steam could not be initialized. Should fix profile save/load problems.
  
• Fixed input problems with a few more controllers (XBox One Wireless and a few other XBox controllers)
  
• Fixed Lord of Despair lance attack animations.
  
• Overworld selection input when using a mouse to select and keys to walk around works better now.
  
• Fixing that left-click for auto-aim override would disable attacks with auto-attack.
  
• Wrong configuration for Golem and Transfixion blocked 2nd Upgrades to pop up.
  

How to join the beta:
Right-click Halls of Torment -> Properties -> Betas
Here set the beta branch to "beta"

_____________________________

[h3]Hello brave heroes![/h3]

Here's a new beta build for you to try out. It contains the upcoming Cupbearer feature which includes potions for trait manipulation (reroll, banish, memorize, and double) as well as the unlock mechanics for those potions. There are also some more QoL improvements and minor bug fixes in this one. The Patch notes can be found further below. You can opt-in into the beta but keep in mind that there might be some data loss when switching back to the previous version.


[h2]Cupbearer[/h2]
As mentioned above, this is the main feature of this update. We've covered it in some detail over in a separate Dev Journal post.

[h2]Change Log[/h2]
Target release period: end of this week or start of next week
More detailed information will follow with the main release.

[h3]Features[/h3]

• New NPC: Cupbearer!
  
• Quest to rescue the Cupbearer
  
• The trait selection can have Reroll, Banish, Memorize, and Double Potions
  
• Collect ingredients to unlock all the potions
  
• Collect bottles to increase the amount of each potion
  
• New Item: Gatherers Charm (automatically acquired when Cupbearer has been rescued)
  
• for more details see our Dev Journal #4
  

• Item pickup from chests is more intuitive now. The new item will be equipped when the slot is unoccupied, otherwise it will be put into the bag. When the bag is also full, the player first has to make space or discard the chest items.
  
• Improved Golem roll and attack behavior
  
• Improved Imp and Skeleton Summons movement speed and steering
  
• Wraith lance attacks will also play a sound now (Lord of Despair and Wraith Horseman)
  
• Ability Scrolls in the world are sometimes guarded by an elite monster
  
• Performance with lots of XP Gems lying around should now be way better. There should also be no massive slowdowns when picking up a Hand of Greed anymore.
  
• Integrated Godot delta smoothing for smother gameplay when the game runs at the vsync limit
  
• Item well state (retrieved, owned, etc.) is not displayed if the Wellkeeper has not been rescued.
  
• Invocators Grasp got its own item graphic.
  
• Removed some very loud low frequencies in Exterminators fire sound which caused some players to complain about its loudness.
  

• Added an error message to the start of the game when Steam could not be initialized. Should fix profile save/load problems.
  
• Fixed input problems with a few more controllers (XBox One Wireless and a few other XBox controllers)
  
• Fixed Lord of Despair lance attack animations.
  
• Overworld selection input when using mouse to select and keys to walk around works better now.
  

Hi there!

Were currently working on the next update and we wanted to give you a quick preview of whats coming and what you can expect. The upcoming update wont be a huge one, since it wont contain new levels or player characters. However, the new mechanics that are introduced will take about another week to be integrated and tested properly because they mesh in with a lot of stuff thats already there.

Oh, and if you want to avoid any spoilers on what those new mechanics are all about, wed advise you to stop reading right now ;)

So with no further ado, heres whats coming next:

The Main Feature
Theres going to be a new addition to your overworld camp, the Cupbearer, a second NPC that unlocks special potions for you. Those potions dont work like health potions that you pick up in the Halls. They are potions that you take with you at the beginning of each run and which are refilled each time you enter the Halls.

But what do they do? Well, they basically allow you to do what is most widely known as reroll and banish in this type of game. Two of the currently available potions serve these two functions in the context of traits. You can use the Strong Wine to reroll a trait selection or you can use the Potion of Oblivion to remove a trait (and all its follow-ups!) from the trait pool for the rest of the run. There are two more potions that allow you to do more advanced things with your traits: the Reverberant Tinkture and the Potion of Memories. Wed like to leave their specific functions to your speculation for now, but we think their names are already a pretty good hint.

After this update, the potions will only work for traits. But we do have plans to introduce new potions that allow you to have more control over abilities (or maybe even items) in future updates.



How are Potions Unlocked?
There are two types of unlocking mechanisms for potions. One unlocks a potion of a specific type while the other increases the available number of an already unlocked potion. You unlock new potions by finding the ingredients scattered across the levels. Ingredients are only visible when youre wearing the Gatherers Charm, which luckily the Cupbearer will drop into your item stash as soon as he arrives at your camp. Once you pick up an ingredient, you dont have to pass it through the well or anything. Currently they simply appear directly in the Cupbearers inventory.

If you want to increase the number of available potions, youll have to find appropriate bottles. Each potion has its own bottle type. They are dropped by certain enemies and need to be retrieved via the well. Once you buy them at the Wellkeeper they increase the available amount of the respective potion.



What else?
Theres still a ton of things in Halls of Torment we want to improve while at the same time providing additional content with each update. We get a lot of feedback from you regarding bugs and balancing issues and were addressing those things one at a time. For instance, summon builds remain less attractive due to their overall performance. We would like to give this part of the game a little bit more work. However, it might take a couple of iterations, since balancing summon based builds is a bit trickier than your typical damage dealing character.

Another area for improvement are the final lord encounters. While the Lord of Pain seems to be pretty much where we wanted him, the other Lords are still lacking the refinement wed like to have.

Besides all that, there are still bugs to be squashed and in some parts the game is still missing audio. We wont be able to address all of this in the next update, but it should give you a rough idea where were heading.


Thank you for supporting us!
Cheers

Paul from Chasing Carrots

[h3]Hello Adventurers![/h3]

We've just updated the game with some smaller changes as announced in our Dev Journal last week. This includes points like having loadouts per character, statistics in the pause menu, and buffing some summons and the Warlock. Below you'll find a full list of changes.

We'll skip the dev journal this week, but at the end of next week we'll post a preview about the development progress of the next bigger update.

We know there are many more points to address, but need time to evaluate, adjust, and test changes. To focus a bit more on new content the frequency of updates will slow down a bit from here on. As a small reminder, we'd be happy to have the next update ready before June ends, but this depends on how well we progress.

[h3]Thanks for your support!
- Chasing Carrots[/h3]


[h2]Change Log | 2023-06-09[/h2]


[h3]Loadouts[/h3]
Loadouts are now replacing your single equipment set. The equipment will be saved per character. We've also added 4 slots that can be used to save loadouts and share equipment combinations between characters. We also fixed the issue from the beta branch in which the loadout wasn't operable via the gamepad.


[h3]Lord of Pain[/h3]
We wanted to remove the timer from the Lord of Pain without making him much easier or harder. The result is that we added a mechanic where the lord gets harder as time passes. Additionally, there is also a hidden mechanic in the Haunted Caverns to help you with that fight!


[h3]Mouse Only Mode[/h3]
We've added this mode as an accessibility feature so players that are limited to mouse movement and just one mouse button (left-click) can play the game. This option can only be turned on through the settings and you can choose to move by click or only when the left mouse button is held down.
In this mode the attack button is changed to right-click and the toggle for auto-attack MMB or any thumb mouse button.


[h3]Summons and Warlock[/h3]
Summons in general were quite underpowered, so we tried to adjust the power of summons on several ends. Still, two weaknesses of summons will remain, specifically for player who currently have unlocked everything. Summons are not the ideal mechanic to keep the screen clean, they will need time to move and will usually stay close to the character.
Since we're planning game modes in the future in which enemies survive longer, we'll wait before further adjusting summons.
Additionally, we decided that summon-buffing items will not be on ring slots any more in order to always allow for two summon rings to be used. Therefore the Invocation Signet has been changed to the Invoker's Grasp which can now also increase the amount of summons.
Summons from summon rings also had an issue where many traits would not apply to them so they wouldn't get a proper increase in attack power.
Lastly, the Warlock's Stance Proficiency has been adjusted to be simply a decision on main weapon focus or summon focus. Please note that his main weapon attack also counts as summon.


[h3]Rebalancing[/h3]
We have given the game a small rebalancing focused on abilities. First of all, we wanted to bring electrify and burn closer to each other in terms of being viable strategies. Many abilities have now lower chances to apply electrify while we reworked burn stacks a bit to no longer be removed individually but work as a single effect. By adding a burn stack all burn stacks now get extended, making it easier to reach higher burn damage numbers.
For the rest of the changes please check the list below:

• Golem's roll ability was reworked and is now circling the player.
  
• Roll base damage and damage increase for roll duration have been increased.
  
• Golem's attack range has been increased.
  
• Ability upgrades of the golem have now additional effects and increasing damage rather than just transforming the element.
  
• Some adjustments in debuff rate, Transfixion and the Cleric have lower chances of applying those.
  
• Astronomer's Orbs damage has been increased.
  
• Range adjustments on Astromer's Orbs are now stronger.
  
• Astronomer's Orbs have been fixed to not revert spin duration anymore.
  
• Arcane Splinter's range has been increased.
  
• Ringblades throwing distance/speed has been reduced, mostly to avoid it destroying containers far off-screen.
  
• Some of the trade-off traits of the Lightning Strike have been weakened.
  
• The Shockwave of Kugelblitz is not activating as often anymore.
  
• Meteorstrike damage has been slightly reduced.
  
• Meteorshower upgrade was reduced to 2, but the damage of each splinter was increased.
  
• The Voltage line of the sorceress was bugged. Critical hits now give electrify stacks.
  
• Also the burn chance for lightning attacks does work now.
  
• The channeling trait does no longer appear whene there's nothing it can have an effect on.
  

• Fixied an issue with Xbox Elite Gamepads.
  
• Fixed crashes on level-up.
  
• Added an option to toggle the pause on focus lost off.
  
• Corrected several typos.
  
• Level IX ability traits now have the proper number on the frame.
  

How to join the beta:
Right-click Halls of Torment -> Properties -> Betas
Here set the beta branch to "beta"

_____________________________

[h3]Hello brave heroes![/h3]

We have a new beta build for you. This patch will test some new QoL features, balancing, and the Mouse Only mode. The Patch notes can be found further below. You can opt-in into the beta but there might be some data loss when changing back to the previous version.

Please consider joining the Discord for proper feedback exchange.
https://discord.gg/chasingcarrots


_____________________________

[h2]Mouse Only Mode[/h2]
We added an experimental movement mode that uses only the mouse. This mode is not meant to be used with the keyboard and there are currently no further explanations in the game. This is a pure accessibility feature for people that can't use controller or keyboards properly and changes for this mode will focus on this group of people.
Mouse-Only can be activated from the main menu. There is an extra option to make that movement only works while holding left-click, per default clicking will be accepted as well.

• You move my clicking (or holding) the left mouse button at the target position.
  
• When in this mode you will always have auto-aim on, it can't be disabled.
  
• Fire or aim overwrite is with right-click instead left-click.
  
• Middle mouse button or thumb mouse buttons toggle auto-attack.
  

• Every character has now their own equipment set to be saved.
  
• Additionally there are 4 shared load-out slots.
  
• Damage statics can now be viewed from the pause menu.
  
• Added item filters to the item stash.
  

• Death timer has been removed.
  
• The Lord of Pain will now get stronger over time.
  
• Lord of Pain HP have been reduced a bit.
  
• Adding a mechanic to ease the Lord of Pain fight.
  

• Invocation Signet has been changed to Invoker's Grasp, Adding more buffs to summons.
  
• Invoker's Grasp is a glove so it won't block a space for summon rings.
  
• Summon movement has been improved, they should not be sliding as much anymore.
  
• Warlock traits have been adjusted to better support summons.
  
• Golems roll ability was reworked and is now circling the warlock.
  
• Roll base damage and damage increase for roll duration have been increased.
  
• Golems attack range has been increased.
  
• Ability upgrades of the golem have now additional effects and increasing damage rather than just transform the element.
  
• Astronomer's Orbs have been fixed to not revert spin duration anymore.
  
• The effect of range changes has been increased.
  
• Orbs mass trait move the orbs now more closely to the player.
  

• Most electrify sources have their chances to apply the effect being reduced.
  
• Burn stacks are no longer individually tracked but are stacked together. Adding a new burn stack extends all burn stacks.
  
• Some adjustment in debuff rate, Transfixion and the Cleric have lower chances of applying those.
  
• Astronomer's Orbs damage has been increased.
  
• Arcane Splinter's range has been increase.
  
• Ringblades throwing distance/speed has been reduced, mostly to avoid it destroying containers far off.
  
• Some of the trade-off traits of the Lightning Strike have been weakened.
  
• The Shockwave of Kugelblitz is not activating as often anymore.
  
• Meteorstrike damage has been slightly reduced.
  
• Meteorshower upgrade was reduced to 2, but the damage of each splinter was increase.
  
• The Voltage line of the sorceress was bugged. Critical hits do now give electrify stacks.
  
• Also the burn chance for lightning attacks does work now.
  
• The channeling trait does no longer appear without anything it can affect it.
  

• Fixing an issue with Xbox Elite Gamepads.
  
• Fixed crashed on level up.
  
• Added an option to toggle the pause on focus loss off.
  

[h2]Hello Adventurers![/h2]

The past week was quite adventurous for us. Thank you all for your great support!
We had only little time to focus on the next bigger additions to the game. But now that the most critical issues have been mostly handled, we can get back on track.

There have been requests for a road map, but we decided against posting one online. Instead we want to give you regular updates about the development progress, decisions, and upcoming content. The outlook were going to provide will be limited to a certain time frame. However, we want to be as transparent as possible about the development process, since we believe this is the only way to receive proper feedback.

We hope we can provide an update post every week. The first update will be a general outlook over the next two months. The weeks after that we want to go into further details of particular topics.



[h2]Short-Term[/h2]
Our plan is to release another update by next week. This update will address mostly currently active content of the game. Well expand on QoL features, balancing, and some other miscellaneous changes.

A list of planned items:

• Reworking the Lord of Pain with a proper quest and removing his death timer.
  
• Tweaking balancing of abilities. (Yes, well make the Golem stronger )
  
• Adding more data in the pause menu.
  
• Equipment loadouts in the item stash
  

• The Cupbearer (an NPC that can be rescued from the Viaduct and will add re-rolls)
  
• Torment Rank Mode (will scale difficulty dynamically for additional rewards)
  
• Re-balancing of several aspects. (items, effects, abilities, characters)
  
• Champion enemies (monsters with additional modifiers)
  
• Possibly some new items, abilities, traits, and blessings
  

• Stage 4 (untitled)
  
• At least 2 new characters
  
• At least 2 new abilities
  
• New quests & items
  
• New element & effect
  
• New game mode
  
• New game feature
  

[h3]Hello Brave Souls![/h3]

The beta test of the last changes was concluded successfully, therefore we have an update for you.
This is hopefully the last HoT Fix we need before focusing on other things.
We'll share some details about the update plan tomorrow.

Thanks again to all that helped us battling the bugs. Reports and also your mails with the logs and .dmp files helped a lot! Please keep it on. As there were so many reports we'll not be able to answer you all individually :)

[h3]Stay Fresh!
- Chasing Carrots[/h3]


[h2]Patch Notes[/h2]

• Fixing missing and resetting quests including double entries from the beta branch. (need to restart the game after initial launch to show missing unlocks)
  
• Fixing many, but not all crashes and starting issues. If you keep getting crashes, please send us further crash dumps.
  
• Fixing further gamepad input issues.
  
• Fixing that items can get stuck at unreachable places. (including the well)
  
• Fixing that you were given the choice of base abilities when already having 6 selected.
  
• If qualifying for it, the Ability Scroll will now at least show one Ability Upgrade. (must be unlocked and have min. trait level 3 & 6)
  
• Game pauses when losing focus.
  
• Character weapons have now proper names in the statistics.
  
• When leveling up or picking up items / abilities the character will get invulnerable for half a second.
  

How to join the beta:
Right-click Halls of Torment -> Properties -> Betas
Here set the beta branch to "beta"

_____________________________

[h3]Hello everyone![/h3]

Thanks for your corporation to find problems with the game.
We added an update to the beta branch. This update will address three issues, if you affected by either issue, we recommend you to read the paragraphs carefully.


[h2]Crashes[/h2]
All the crash dumps we got were very helpful in finding the point where it crashes and the good news is: that one is on us, so something that we can fix! But this requires some deeper changes. Anyone affected by this is prompted to switch to the beta branch and play again. We hope you won't run into more issues.
Please let us know in the comments below this news if the patch actually helped you (positive feedback is important, the same as negative is)

If you still keep getting crashes - Please send us following data:
- Crash Dumps -> %AppData%\HallsOfTorment\crashes
- Log Files -> %AppData%\HallsOfTorment\logs
- Save Files -> ..Steam\userdata\\2218750\remote

Send all files to support@chasing-carrots.com

%AppData% can be entered in windows in the address bar.
It should bring you here: C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming


[h2]Starting Problems[/h2]
We addressed one issue, but we are unsure if this will do anything. We need affected players that can't start the game at all to switch to the beta branch and test if that one works. If it works, please leave a comment below.
If it does not work, please do following for us.

- Open your task manager
- Switch to "Details"
- Right-click "Godot"
- Select "Create dump file"

This file might get a bit bigger, you can zip it and upload somewhere.
Please send us this file to our support: support@chasing-carrots.com


[h2]Quest Resets[/h2]
There are some quirks left and it might be some issue with the cloud save.

Please try following:
- Disable cloud saves from the properties
- Switch to the beta branch
- Start the beta branch game
- Check your quests on the quest board
- Restart Halls of Torment
- Make sure all unlocks (characters etc.) are there
- Close the game
- Enable cloud saves again

Following above's steps should ensure that most progress should be back and saved.
It may however be, that some quests in progress lost part of their progress.
This will also recover all quests where you got the achievements already.
Please let us know whether this works for you or not.


Thank you all for the support, lets squish those bugs together
- Chasing Carrots

How to join the beta:
Right-click Halls of Torment -> Properties -> Betas
Here set the beta branch to "beta"

_____________________________

[h3]Hello everyone![/h3]

Thanks for your corporation to find problems with the game.
We added an update to the beta branch. This update will address three issues, if you affected by either issue, we recommend you to read the paragraphs carefully.

_____________________________

[h2]Crashes[/h2]

All the crash dumps we got were very helpful in finding the point where it crashes and the good news is: that one is on us, so something that we can fix! But this requires some deeper changes. Anyone affected by this is prompted to switch to the beta branch and play again. We hope you won't run into more issues.
Please let us know in the comments below this news if the patch actually helped you (positive feedback is important, the same as negative is)

If you still keep getting crashes - Please send us following data:
- Crash Dumps -> %AppData%\HallsOfTorment\crashes
- Log Files -> %AppData%\HallsOfTorment\logs
- Save Files -> ..Steam\userdata\\2218750\remote

Send all files to support@chasing-carrots.com

%AppData% can be entered in windows in the address bar.
It should bring you here: C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming

_____________________________

[h2]Starting Problems[/h2]

We addressed one issue, but we are unsure if this will do anything. We need affected players that can't start the game at all to switch to the beta branch and test if that one works. If it works, please leave a comment below.
If it does not work, please do following for us.

- Open your task manager
- Switch to "Details"
- Right-click "Godot"
- Select "Create dump file"

This file might get a bit bigger, you can zip it and upload somewhere.
Please send us this file to our support: support@chasing-carrots.com

_____________________________

[h2]Quest Resets[/h2]

There are some quirks left and it might be some issue with the cloud save.

Please try following:
- Disable cloud saves from the properties
- Switch to the beta branch
- Start the beta branch game
- Check your quests on the quest board
- Restart Halls of Torment
- Make sure all unlocks (characters etc.) are there
- Close the game
- Enable cloud saves again

Following above's steps should ensure that most progress should be back and saved.
It may however be, that some quests in progress lost part of their progress.
This will also recover all quests where you got the achievements already.
Please let us know whether this works for you or not.

_____________________________

Thank you all for the support, lets squish those bugs together
[h3]- Chasing Carrots[/h3]

[h2]UPDATE:[/h2]

Hey everyone, thank you for your patience. We just updated the game again, this time the save games should work. If you have not done anything to your save files, the backup should recover your quest data. If any issue persist, please let us know.
Make sure you got the update by restarting Steam.

Cheers
Chasing Carrots


[h2]Hello Adventurers![/h2]

We have some new fixes for you. Unfortunately, we have not yet made much progress with crashes and starting issues. But we are getting a bit closer in finding the causes.

For the ones of you with crashes: Thank you for the crash reports. We added additional functionality to collect reports. This process won't automatically upload the files, so you need to send us crash reports again. This is a new tool that will save the files in %AppData%\HallsOfTorment\crashes

When the game crashes, it requires 10-15 seconds to generate those reports. Please wait a short period until you see an error message! Send these reports to support@chasing-carrots.com


For the audio fix, we have patched this now on the main branch, we see it does not solve all problems, but it helps to a certain extend so we are going to keep this for now.


[h3]- Cheers
Chasing Carrots[/h3]



[h2]Patch Notes[/h2]

• Warlock main projectiles count now as Main Weapon. This means statistics will be correct and all items applying to main weapons will now work with them.
  
• "Mark of Madness" did work, but players had a negative count. negative counts will be reset if they should be positive.
  
• Some players had more than 200 quests completed, this was caused by them having some older PRELUDE data with quests that aren't used anymore.
  
• Fixed an issue where connected input devices could interfere with Keyboard controls.
  
• It's possible to adjust the flash effect on enemies from the settings.
  
• Chests open and close now in appropriate sounds levels.
  

Heyhey,

I've read through the forums and attempting some easier bug fixes over the weekend. But please have patience with the team, it was a long week and we need the weekend to recover a bit. We'll address more issues afterwards.

Please keep reporting bugs!
Cheers Mara~


[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• Strikes proficiency buffs from the Sorceress won't disappear after 5 seconds anymore.
  
• The hood is no longer named helmet.
  
• Hopefully fixed "Mark of Madness" Quest, this is a bit tricky and I can't reproduce it, but I believe it should work now.
  
• Viaduct elite enemies did not account for Elite related quests.
  
• Meteorstrike and Kugelblitz no longer will trigger Spellcaster Gloves and Guiding Star
  
• Quest "Broken Body" did not properly register the Fragile effect.
  

• Reducing requirements for Pinpoint milestones by 50%.
  
• The quest "Demonic Exchange" now requires the Warlock HP be below 250.
  
• Every restart of the game should send achievement states to the steam server. Make sure you are online to get your Achievements registered.
  

• We will do something about the boss counter in Haunted Caverns, hopefully will be patched next week
  
• More balancing updated will come with the priority to make all items and abilities viable to use, but also nerfing some things to present a more well rounded overall gameplay. (We don't try to kill off OP builds, it's a single player experience anyways)
  
• Some achievements have wrong descriptions, this will be adjusted the next days.
  

Greetings Pestkillers!

Do you feel as much to squish bugs as I do? Great because I've got another list today for you all and also some additional information. If you have startup issues, crashes or audio crackling, please read until the end!


[h3]Bug Squishes[/h3]

• Wraith Slayer does now count Wraiths instead of Gargoyles.
  
• Reduction in max health is not counted as damage taken anymore.
  
• Removing "Summon Health" from Warlock traits. (was never a thing)
  
• Golem should no longer be lazy and idle instead of attacking.
  
• All effect kills should now count towards "Prolonged Suffering" Quest.
  
• Warlock quest "Mark of Madness" now properly tracks damage taken.
  
• Trader I & Trader II quest now use the absolute count of items for tracking.
  
• Quests that had you avoid doing something for 30 minutes are now 28 minutes and should work reliably.
  
• Lord of Despair is not stuck outside of the Viaduct anymore.
  
• Fixing Skeletons and Imps not being unsummoned when unequipping their rings.
  
• Fixing wrong potion drop chances on Viaduct.
  
• Electrify stacks where not properly triggered in the amount they should when the game was lagging.
  
• Lord of Despair no longer drops his gem in the air.
  
• Boss music should now loop.
  
• Several smaller text adjustments.
  

• Increasing the base pickup range by 50% for all characters.
  
• Cleric's stand now requires 1 500 health to be regenerated instead of 2 500.
  
• Sorceress has no longer base regeneration.
  
• Damage bonus for Shield Maiden's secondary attack has been reduced by 33%.
  
• Golem's base attack increased from 50 to 75.
  
• Golem's bonus on attack from roll duration increased by 20%.
  
• Golems base speed increased by 25%.
  
• Reduced requirement for "Trader II" Quest to 40 items.
  

• Adding an info for quests that must be completed in one run how well you did in the last run. (quest board)
  
• Reducing volume of exterminator weapon.
  
• Characters no longer regenerate when at max. health.
  
• Mastery quests and quests tracking specific weapon/effect damage are now in sync with the statistics.
  

Hello my dear Tormented Souls!

We have found false torment spreading among our brave heroes, so we decided to squish the pesky bugs bothering you and cursing some lords. Please keep reporting your issues, we'll continue the next days.

• An issue where PRELUDE players could not complete quests for the Viaduct, Warlock and Cleric.
  
• Lowering the Lords health slightly.
  
• Elites on Viaduct have a bit less health, but now there are 6 of them - more abilities!
  
• Kill requirements for the Sorceress unlock have been reduced.
  
• STOMP quest of the Shield Maiden has been fixed.
  
• Bullwark quest requirements have been reduced.
  
• Gargoyle elite enemies won't drop gold and scroll over the edge anymore.
  
• It's no longer possible anymore to enter locked levels.
  
• Single blessings can now be refunded with the gamepad
  

Hello Adventurers!

Were proud to announce that Halls of Torment is now available on Steam Early Access!
Choose one of (currently!) seven unlockable characters and descend into the dark depths where demonic horrors lurk. Slay hordes of monsters, unlock new abilities, and find new equipment that will help you overcome the challenges further down below.

[h2]Important Information for PRELUDE Players[/h2]
If youve played the PRELUDE version of Halls of Torment and want your progress to carry over to the full version of the game there are a few prerequisites:

• On the machine you want to continue with your PRELUDE progress, the PRELUDE save file must be locally available. Normally this should be the case, if you havent switched to another device or cleared your system for some reason.
  
• If you are on a new machine since playing the PRELUDE, you can ensure that your progress is copied by installing the PRELUDE version and starting it once.
  

• Open the settings menu
  
• Click on the button Import PRELUDE Savegame in the lower left corner
  
• Confirm the dialog with Yes
  
• The game should restart automatically with your prelude progress restored in the full game.
  

Hello Adventurers!

In just one week, Halls of Torment will enter Early Access! Later today well stream a bit of gameplay, answer any of your questions, and respond to your feedback. Join us on Twitch (17:30 CEST / GMT+2) - If you cant join, dont worry, the VOD will be available later on Twitch and Youtube.

If youd prefer to see more professional video content, also dont worry, well be sending out the first keys to content creators within the next 48 hours! For that we are preparing an update of Halls of Torment (not the PRELUDE) which is a preview of the Early Access version. However, there might still be rough edges, since were in the midst of finalizing and polishing the game for the EA release. If you are a content creator and would like to request a key, please contact us via pr@chasing-carrots.com or via keymailer


[h2]EA Content Overview[/h2]


[h3]FORGOTTEN VIADUCT[/h3]

• A new stage with new enemies, bosses and characters to unlock
  
• Its the first stage in which we want to try out different layouts and enemy behaviours.
  
• Enemy behaviours are tailored to the stage geometry.
  
• Forgotten Viaduct can be unlocked by defeating the 2nd boss on Ember Grounds.
  
• A new NPC to discover. (work in progress)
  

• 4 new unlockable player characters
  
• Cleric: Built around debuffs and regeneration, has a magic short range attack that deals its total damage evenly spread among all hit enemies.
  
• Warlock: Can exchange health for attack power and focus on summons. Attacks with summon type projectiles that are chasing enemies.
  
• Shield Maiden: Has a shield besides her main weapon which she can also use to attack and knock back enemies. The attack of the shield scales with her block strength.
  
• Sorceress: Queen of Thunder, can cast Chain Lightning to either focus single enemies or spread it among the enemy rows.
  

• Ember Grounds enemy spawns got adjusted for new boss encounters.
  
• Increased number of Abilities that can be found on Ember Ground.
  
• Haunted Caverns have an upgraded look and design, making it more spooky.
  
• Its possible to unlock starting abilities on all stages.
  
• Power ups can now spawn on stages. (work in progress)
  
• Hand of Greed now has a marker displaying its location.
  
• Each stage starts with a Hand of Greed spawned.
  
• The relative gold drop on stages has been reduced.
  
• Stages now reward gold based on defeated enemies and time survived.
  
• XP Curves have been adjusted for a more consistent levelling experience.
  

• Added 4 new abilities to the game. (Radiant Aura, Clay Golem, Kugelblitz, Meteor Strike)
  
• Abilities can be unlocked by finishing character quests.
  
• Changed the traits for all abilities, there are now 6 paths for each trait type.
  
• Each ability starts with 2 trait types unlocked, additional types must be unlocked.
  
• Abilities can be levelled 10 times. The possible trait types for each level vary.
  
• When abilities reach level 3 and 6 they can be upgraded with ability scrolls.
  
• All abilities have currently 2 upgrades, most upgrades must be unlocked.
  
• Damage dealt and max. DPS reached for all abilities are now listed at the end of each stage.
  
• Damage from effects are listed separately as they stack and can influence each other.
  
• Added a new damage type: Lightning, which can cause Electrify status effects.
  
• Electrify deals damage based on the applied stacks. The tick time reduces with more stacks and the stack amount decreases with each tick.
  
• Abilities will now include information about important functions and have their types listed.
  

• Added over a hundred new quests
  
• All quests are tied to achievements on Steam
  
• New Icons for quests (work in progress)
  
• Locked quest boards are no longer displayed
  
• Quests without unlocks now reward gold
  
• Additional information about completion rate
  
• Completed quests are now displayed at the end of a run (work in progress)
  
• Endscreen also displays suggested next quests (work in progress)
  
• Bonus XP from quests are now displayed on the quest board and as a buff
  

• Added several new items with more to come over the next few weeks.
  
• Not all planned items are in the game for the current progress, yet. Expect more over the next few weeks.
  
• Added rings to summon minions to fulfil your need to play summon focussed builds.
  
• New items around the new Lightning damage type.
  
• Several other new items to be discovered.
  
• We are rebalancing items to avoid having totally over- or underpowered items. This is work in progress and well adjust them over the coming weeks.
  

• Added the option to target while auto aim is on to override target direction.
  
• To override with the mouse, clicking the left mouse button is necessary.
  
• Added the affliction effect that makes enemies more vulnerable to damage over time effects.
  
• Upgraded endscreen with statistics and completed quests.
  

• New Blessings (Duration, Lightning Damage, On Hit Chance, Block Strength)
  
• New Traits (Lightning Affinity, Channelling, False Blessing, Multihit & Piercing Wind II, Demonic Exchange, Bulwark)
  
• New Pickups (Attack, Attack Speed, Invincibility, Food) (Work in Progress)
  

• Gold values will increase, more gold will drop and be rewarded in general.
  
• Blessings and Items will cost more gold.
  
• Some general base traits have been adjusted for more well rounded balancing.
  
• Critical Hits and other chances can now exceed 100% and be applied several times at once.
  
• All effects have increased chances to apply and can stack multiple times to increase effectivity
  

[h2]Hello Adventurers![/h2]

Were happy to announce that Halls or Torment will launch into Early Access on 24th May with a price tag of $4.99 | 4.99!

During the next couple of days you might see a bit more activity on our part again. Prior to the release well be streaming the game on Twitch on Tuesday, 16th May. Wed love to see you join us over here: https://www.twitch.tv/chasingcarrots


[h3]Wishlist now![/h3]
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2218750/Halls_of_Torment/



If youre a streamer, content creator, or from the press, were going to start sending out keys for you on 17th May. Contact us either via email pr@chasing-carrots.com or via keymailer.

To all our players out there: Thank you for your overwhelming support! 94% of the 763 reviews have been positive! Over 45 000 of you have tried the PRELUDE and given us valuable feedback, bug reports, and suggestions. Were thrilled to see the success Halls of Torment has had so far and were eager to bring you new and exciting content throughout the upcoming Early Access phase.



[h3]What new stuff is coming with the EA release?[/h3]

• 4 new characters (Cleric, Warlock, Sorceress, Shield Maiden)
  
• 4 new abilities (Radiant Aura, Summon Golem, Meteor Strike, Kugelblitz)
  
• 2 major upgrades for each ability
  
• all abilities will get more and better specialized traits
  
• an entirely new stage, the Forgotten Viaduct
  
• new bosses in Ember Grounds and an updated look for Haunted Caverns
  
• a new elemental effect which can be a powerful boss slayer: Electrify
  
• many new quests that will be all hooked up to the Steam Achievements
  
• a new NPC in trouble on the Forgotten Viaduct
  
• many new items to discover and retrieve from the halls
  
• a couple of new quality of life features
  

Hello Adventurers!

Today we are releasing just a small patch for the PRELUDE. We are still in the middle of getting ready for Early Access. But we have some additional information for you regarding Early Access today.
Weve already mentioned a couple of things about this during our DevStream on Tuesday. If youve missed it you can watch it here on YouTube

[previewyoutube=uUSDX0cnhPw;full][/previewyoutube]

The Early Access will start with 7 characters, 11 abilities and 3 stages. We will expand upon abilities giving you the possibility to upgrade or evolve them, depending on how you want to call it. Each ability upgrade should be roughly as powerful as the initial ability itself. Ability upgrades can be chosen instead of a new ability when for example picking up the Scroll of Mastery.





But our main focus has been on playable characters.
The 4 additional characters for the Early Access will be:

• Cleric (Debuffs & Regeneration)
  
• Warlock (Summonings)
  
• Shield Maiden (Blocking & Crowd Control)
  
• Sorceress (Lightning Damage & Electrify Effect)
  

• Updated effect markers (Slow & Fragile).
  
• Burn effect damage numbers are now displayed differently than normal damage.
  
• Rats from the rat ring have now proper sprites
  

• Stun is now also setting the attack speed of enemies to 0.
  
• Fixing the Bogged Boots, they actually slow down now.
  
• Rat ring cant be used to spawn endless rats anymore.
  
• Arrows and Swordsman hits with fire damage are not unblockable anymore.
  
• Fixed an issue that allowed item duping.
  
• Settings wouldnt save on the first start of the game.
  
• Adding backup save games in case of corrupted save games, so not the whole progress is wiped.
  

[h3]Hello everyone,[/h3]

We are making good progress towards the EA. Wed like to show you the most recent progress and talk about it in our next dev stream. If you cant join us live, dont worry - youll be able to watch VODs on Twitch or YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJQDnWBP6oKKQt56riGw_9T9gNQcxVeGT

Also, for later next week we intend to release a Patch for the PRELUDE with some additional QoL items and Bug Fixes. Some of this will be shown during the stream.

Stream Date: 25th April 2023
Stream Start: 17:00 CEST | 15:00 UTC | 08:00 am PST
Link: https://www.twitch.tv/chasingcarrots

We hope to see you there!
- Chasing Carrots

Hello Adventurers!

We are doing good progress on the Early Access version. We are still aiming for a release in Q2 this year. However, we very much prefer to make a solid game instead of pushing a hasty release. Wed also like to thank everyone for joining our latest dev stream and hanging out with us while talking about Halls of Torment. The next stream will be announced a bit earlier than the last one, promised!
If you missed it, you can watch it on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLqME7PbSGc

In this update, were focusing mainly on bug fixes, polish, and QoL features. There are still a couple of known issues on our list which we will tackle in future updates. Your feedback helps us to determine the highest priorities when it comes to improving the game experience. We will keep on reading through forums and our discord channel and keep in touch with you.


[h2]Change Log 2023-04-06[/h2]

[h3]FEATURES[/h3]

• Character traits now have two variations for each level so will be able to further customize your build. This has been applied to Swordsman, Archer, and Exterminator in the PRELUDE.
  
• Multistrike & projectiles can now be partial. Those partial additional attacks are applied regularly on each n-th attack.
  
• Block Chance is superseded by Block Strength which will determine the Block Chance of a character based on incoming damage. Block Strength can lead to a 100% Block Chance for attacks with a power of of the Block Strength.
  
• Auto-aim can now be toggled with buttons.
  
• Ember Grounds now has its own soundtrack.
  

• New Double Slash Trait (I) has been added, additional levels will be made available through quests later on.
  
• The Scorched Giant elite in Ember Grounds is now a Scorched Giant Thrower.
  

• Ashen Wyrms now stay longer overground and wait a bit longer before attacking.
  

• Lord of Pain now casts homing projectiles with the death curse. (In the future we plan to add a quest item that allows you to cancel the curse projectile. Originally, it was not intended to beat this encounter by reviving)
  

• Added more descriptions for traits
  
• Added special info for Additional Attacks, Block Chance and Defense in the stat-tooltip
  
• Added an input delay to trait and ability selection
  
• Added graphics to the final screen
  
• Character Stats can now be navigated with a gamepad
  
• Items have now indicators to show if they have been retrieved or bought
  

• Auto-Aim and Auto-Attack is now properly saved and applied
  
• Power Hitter quest can now be completed
  

Hello everyone,

First, wed like to thank you for all of your feedback and reports! When we launched the PRELUDE, we didnt expect it to become so well received. This week we dont have an update for the PRELUDE version. Instead were going to be live on stream playing the game and talking about future steps and changes.

We invite you to join us for one or two cozy hours of Halls of Torment talk and play. Ask us any questions and celebrate the progress of the game with us!


Stream Date: 30th March 2023
Stream Start: 18:00 CEST | 16:00 UTC | 09:00 am PST
Link: https://www.twitch.tv/chasingcarrots



We hope to see you there!
- Chasing Carrots

Hello Adventurers!

Greetings from the team! Wed like to thank you once more for your support. We reached over 15 000 Wishlist entries for the Early Access, still rising. There are over 100 discussions in the Forum going on, a wiki is getting started, a subreddit has been created and we have great activity on the Discord Server.
Also a huge thanks to all content creators and streamers for sharing their joy about the game. We are reading and watching through as much feedback and impressions as we can.

Development is moving forward quickly and its time for another patch!


[h2]Change Log 2023-03-23[/h2]

[h3]FEATURES[/h3]

• The Flamedancer, first boss of Ember Grounds, got two new attack patterns.
  

• Improved performance of monsters
  
• Improved player upgrade performance
  
• Improved Abilities performance
  
• Improved of XP Gem performance
  

• Sometimes on pickup the game would crash.
  
• Fixed a freeze when an item chest was collected while the player was dying.
  
• Fixed that loading of stages could be triggered multiple times.
  

• Visual Upgrades to Ember Grounds
  
• Visual Upgrades to the Overworld
  
• Updated all trait frames
  
• Added several new item graphics
  

• Added general description to undiscovered quests
  
• Changed item stash location and sprite in the overworld
  
• Improved sprite visibility of Ashen Wyrms in Ember Grounds
  
• Auto-Aim will now target on breakables
  
• When reviving an effect is shown
  

• Bullets would not properly react to: Sparking Tips, Ring of Fire, Shockwave Core
  
• Sparking Tips projectiles would not set enemies on fire
  
• Firewalker Boots and Bogged Boots no longer react to the attack speed modifier
  
• Dragons Breath could trigger burn endlessly on hit
  
• Dragons Breath and Ring of Fire now make the Fire Affinity trait appear (if unlocked)
  
• Fixed quest description for monster type kill quests
  
• Added monster types to all monsters on Ember Grounds (mostly Scorched and Imps)
  
• Items could be picked up multiple times from chests
  
• When re-entering a level, values on the right side should be properly reset now
  
• Quests hidden state will now be saved properly. A patch will unhide all falsely hidden quests.
  

• Reworked Transfixion ability: lower chance for the debuff but significantly increasied damage
  
• All burning effects: 10dmg/0.2s for 2s -> 25dmg/0.5 for 5s
  
• All burning chances have been generally halved
  
• Flamewalker boots trigger distance: 2.5m -> 5m
  
• Flamewalker boots burn chance as been reduced by 60%
  
• Sparking Tips damage 5 -> 25
  
• Shockwave Core range: 1.5m -> 2.0m
  
• Exterminators projectile damage falloff: 30% -> 25%
  
• Dragons Breath cooldown traits: increasing attack speed bonus
  
• Potions heal now 25 + 5% health
  
• Potion and Hand of Greed drops have been increased by 20%
  
• Invincibility time after spawn of slimes has been reduced to 200ms
  

Hello Adventurers!

Thank you for your support! We had an awesome first week with the PRELUDE and we are glad that youve found enjoyment in the Halls of Torment. Weve read through your feedback and issue reports.
Todays update will mainly address the problems we could fix until now and smaller changes to the game.


[h2]Change Log 2023-03-15[/h2]

[h3]FEATURES[/h3]

• Full gamepad support has been added and a steam default configuration has been set.
  
• If you have any input problems, please reset the gamepad to default settings for the game.
  

• XP distribution has been modified among monsters, giving early monsters more XP comparatively.
  
• Completed quests now only give 0.5% additional XP instead of 1%.
  
• Astronomers Orbs now have a smaller starting distance.
  
• Range modifier affects Astronomers Orbs less.
  
• Size modifier of Astronomers Orbs has been reduced.
  
• Second orbit of Astronomer's Orbs now spawns closer to the player.
  
• Disabled the automatic difficulty scaling (Torment Rank) for now.
  

• Piercing Wind trait unlocks only when the player has an attack that requires Piercing.
  
• Mouse cursor will not be hidden anymore. This should fix disappearing cursor issues overall.
  
• More Linux versions should natively be supported. Anything newer than Ubuntu 18.04 LTS should work.
  

• The Wellkeeper cage location in Ember Grounds is indicated with a marker.
  
• Opening the pause menu will always open the character view first.
  
• Main menu can be opened without selecting a character.
  

• Weapon Proficiency is now using roman numerals.
  
• Blessings and stages are now unlocked without having to restart the game.
  
• Quests requiring certain damage now include critical hits (e.g. Power Hitter).
  
• Killing 50 000 enemies with effects quest is now properly tracking progress.
  
• Lord of Pain kills are now properly recognized by the quest system.
  
• Character selection via gamepad has been fixed.
  
• Runner Shoes movement buff has been fixed and should be now permanent.
  
• Corrected the description of Spellcaster Gloves: it increases all direct damage.
  
• Scorched Skeletons in Ember Grounds dropped way too much XP.
  
• It should now be possible to equip the right ring slot properly at any time.
  
• Health of monsters now doesnt increase over time in Ember Grounds.
  
• Fixed stats display of pickup ranges and health regeneration tooltips.
  

• Optimised environments
  
• Optimised Imp behaviour
  
• Optimised performance of destructible objects
  

• Fixed: Certain monsters could cause crashes on death events.
  

Hello Adventurers!

In time for the PRELUDE we have more exciting changes to share with you.


[h2]Change Log 2023-03-09[/h2]

[h3]FEATURES[/h3]

• Level 2 (Ember Grounds) now has a proper progression with its own elites and bosses. Some bosses are substitutes for now and are slightly different versions from the first stage.
  
• Additional enemies with ballistic projectiles (Vulcano Slime Elite)
  
• Additional exploding enemies (Bomber Imps and Unstable Magma Slimes)
  
• Many more additional enemies for Ember Grounds
  

• Ember Grounds now has a steeper XP curve in the beginning
  
• Traits are now available based on your level
  
• Additional level 4 & 5 traits have been added for most general traits
  
• Effect of traits have been adjusted (up and down, overall values increased)
  
• Movement speed mods have been decreased as well as enemy speed
  
• Adjusted drop rates of Hand of Greed and Potions
  

• Wishlist and discord buttons in the top right of the overworld UI
  

• Several assets for items have been added
  
• Descriptions of traits, abilities and modifiers have been updated
  
• XPGain and Pickup range are now displayed in the stats
  

• Several quests were bugged. While some were removed, most have been fixed
  
• Fixed the quests that should have been visible where hidden
  
• Fixed a bug where revive blessings would crash the game
  
• Fixed a bug where monster speed would increase during pause
  

[h2]Hello Adventurers![/h2]

The PRELUDE to Halls of Torment has been released and we invite everyone to play!
This is a stand-alone
Demo version of Halls of Torment and can be played for free.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2316660/Halls_of_Torment_Prelude/

We hope youll join us on our adventure making the game by giving it a try and if possible leave some feedback along the way. The PRELUDE savegame will be fully compatible with the main version of the game and can be played on Windows and any Linux device, including the Steam Deck.

Since the development of the game is in full swing, many parts of the game are still not fully fleshed out, yet. This includes bits that you can find in the PRELUDE. While development continues, we intend to update the demo version with bug fixes, QoL updates, and other changes that affect the content including the demo.

[h3]What can you play in the Demo?[/h3]

• 3 Characters
  
• 2 Stages
  
• 20+ unique enemies
  
• 7 Abilities
  
• 100+ Traits
  
• 50+ Quests
  
• 30+ Items
  

Hello Adventurers!

Unfortunately, we didnt have update notes on last weeks update. But we didnt have many visible changes either. This week we have some more exciting changes that play big parts in the preparation for the PRELUDE version.

An important note: Todays update will reset your progress and remove the Shield Maiden character for now. Hopefully, we wont need another save game reset, since weve sorted out the meta progression for the PRELUDE and dont want to entirely redo it again.


Change Log 2023-03-03

[h2]FEATURES[/h2]

• Gamepad support! Its almost complete and all essential menus should be usable.
  
• Auto-aim setting for the main attack
  
• A powerup item that will collect all XP on the current stage
  
• New unlockable traits for each ability
  
• New boss: FlameDancer in Ember Grounds
  
• New enemy: exploding imps
  

• Unlocking the Wellkeeper will now add start items to the chest
  
• Torment rank build-up is now a bit faster
  
• Haunted Caverns progression is now a bit easier
  
• Ember Grounds now unlock by defeating the Imp Chieftain boss
  

• Quests can now be bound to specific stages
  
• Quests have been recreated with a new progression in mind
  
• Added many Icons for items & traits
  
• Added final assets for Ring Blades and Arcane Splinter
  

• Additional sounds
  

• Fixed all those nasty crashes that happened by taking damage from stuff on the ground (like slime puddles and fire patches)
  
• Putting the well back on the Haunted Cavern once unlocked
  
• Initial shooting directions are set so that bullets wont get stuck when entering a stage
  
• Abilities wont continue to fire anymore in the revive screen.
  
• Radiant Aura trait description had negative values printed in green instead of red
  

• Major changes to reduce CPU load
  
• Changed processing of physics and movement behaviours for better performance
  
• The general performance on all devices, especially in later waves should improve - please send us feedback about this!
  

Greetings Adventures!

Today were bringing great news! On 9th March the prelude of Halls of Torment will be released.
You will be able to play the first part of the game for free yourself.

Wishlist the PRELUDE to not miss its release:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2316660

The PRELUDE will include following content:

• 2 stages with dynamic progression
  
• 3+ unique bosses
  
• 15+ unique monsters
  
• 3+ playable characters
  
• 6+ different and upgradable abilities
  
• 8+ blessings making you stronger for each attempt
  
• 30+ different items to unlock and retrieve
  
• 100+ traits that upgrade characters and abilities
  
• 30+ quests to complete
  

Hello Adventurers!

We have another development week behind us and we made quite some progress this week on some technical parts in regards to performance but also a lot of balancing. With big steps we getting closer to where we want to be for the first public version of the game and we might have some news in that regard next week.


___________________


[h2]Change Log 2023-02-17[/h2]

FEATURES

• Each completed quest increases the experience gain by 1%
  
• You can now find abilities and items on the stage
  
• Added more Gamepad support, some menus are still missing
  

• General monster health has been increased
  
• General monster damage has been increased
  
• Lowered the speed for Hellhounds
  
• Increased speed of Elites and Boss Monsters
  
• Difficulty through the waves of monsters increases faster
  
• Lowered the effect of the torment rank
  
• Torment rank no longer increases monster damage and monster speed
  
• Monster speed increases over time now
  
• Level ups require significant more experience through later levels
  
• Increased the damage of all abilities (exception: transfixion -> view bug fixes)
  
• Ember Grounds boxes now drop more gold and potions than
  
• Reduced potions drops in Haunted Halls
  
• Increased Effect of Receptive Mind (6% -> 10%)
  
• All fire damage have increase Burn Chance
  
• Burn damage ticks faster now for lower damage
  

• Ember Grounds unlocks now by surviving until the Skeleton Lord appears
  

• Elites now have a blue outline while bosses have red outlines
  
• Added several UI Sounds
  
• Regeneration values are now shown in per Second values
  
• Added button prompts when entering the halls (can be deactivated)
  
• Added character selection prompt when the game started
  

• The damage of arcane splinters did not decline over time
  
• Transfixion dealt 5 times the damage it should
  
• Quest Flaming Passion was fixed
  
• Quest Shield Training was fixed
  
• Health would sometimes not properly displayed when picking up potions
  

• Putting physics into a different process to spread load between CPUs
  
• Reduced the damage numbers that can pop up (also added a setting to toggle them off)
  
• Reduce logging load
  
• Stages should load faster through better resource loading
  

[h2]Greetings adventurers![/h2]

Mara here with some insight into how the stages work!
Our goal is to have several stages, with each having its own environment, enemies, and bosses. Right now we have one level ready and a second one in the making.


[h3]Stage 1: Haunted Caverns[/h3]

Being the first stage in the game this one has a slow start. Its mostly dominated by skeletons and youll encounter mainly skeleton themed bosses. But there are also other enemies waiting for you such as imps, slimes, and hell hounds.


[h3]Stage 2: Ember Grounds[/h3]

Scorched souls and flame demons are roaming the Ember Grounds. Similar to the Haunted Caverns it is a rather open space but it starts out faster into the action. Enemies are evolving and where cute little imps used to poke you with forks they now show up with more vicious arms.

For the future we are planning to bring more stages with interesting geometry. Those stages will include more constraints on player movement and introduce some more diverse gameplay. We already have planned two or three stages that are bigger than those already in the game. We also plan to have different twists within stages and maybe smaller substages.



[h2]Main Stage Progression[/h2]


In the main stages time ticks down from 30 minutes to your certain doom. Your task is to survive as long as you can. Most commonly you will encounter swarms of enemies trying to surround you and devour both your flesh and soul. Among those hordes you will encounter elite enemies and bosses.

Elite enemies are stronger versions of regular enemies, highlighted with glowing outlines. Defeating them will reward you with abilities that will help you to face stronger foes.

But above the Elites are the Bosses. They are the true hazards and they will try their best to crush you. Not only do they have significantly more health, they also have unique attack patterns that require good evasion skills on your part, while monsters keep swarming you!
Defeating bosses will reward you with a selection of equipment that can be recovered later on and reused in all future runs.

While collecting abilities and items you also level up your character as you might be familiar with in this type of game. On each level up you can pick one character trait. All those traits you earn are passive upgrades that will increase your main weapons, abilities, character stats, or general parameters.



[h2]Additional Features[/h2]
Besides the obvious progression we have some additional features to make slaying your way through stages more interesting:

• Unlockables through events
  
• Torment Rank
  
• Quests (Achievements)
  
• Torment Level (to be implemented)
  
• Items freely spread over the stage (to be implemented)
  
• Different types of shrines (to be implemented)
  

Hello Champions!

The first week of the playtest has passed and we have the first updates for you. We are still looking for more testers and you can register here to get a key sent within the coming days and weeks.
Well send out more keys later today.

We want to thank you for your feedback so far. Besides the usual progress we do, we also added and improved on points you told us should get some love!


___________________


[h2]Change Log 2023-02-10[/h2]

CONTENT

• Adding a new ability: Arcane Splinters (Name TBD)
  Attacks automatically vertically in short range spreading splinters that stick to the ground and deal damage to any enemy running over them. Damage decreases over time.
  ( ) Six upgrade traits have been added as well.
  ( ) Name and assets are place holders for now.
  
  
• Adding a new ability: Ringblades (Name TBD)
  Attacks automatically horizontally alternating between both sides. The blades will accelerate backwards and come back to the throwing location and then travel outwards the screen mowing down all enemies in the path.
  ( ) Six upgrade traits have been added as well.
  ( ) Name and assets are place holders for now.
  

• Adding a function to refund all blessings
  
• Improving gamepad support enabling character selection in the start menu and using certain UIs with the game. Gamepad support is not yet complete and more updates to come.
  

• Player damage and monster health have been increased by a factor of 5 for more fine tuned balancing changes
  
• Changing an upgrade for the archer from piercing to an additional arrow
  
• Increasing the starting range of the Swordsman
  

• Increases the sound of collected XP
  
• Added that the pitch of XP collection increases the closer you are to the next level up
  
• Improving the mouse visibility
  
• Updating the slime death animation
  
• Adding a small fade when unpausing the game
  

• The final boss should now always appear when the time hits 0
  
• Characters that appear in the overworld should not run in circles anymore
  
• Kills and damage from Phantom Needles, Transfixion and Breath of Fire arenot accounted for.
  

Welcome, Adventurers!

We are thrilled to announce that well be starting a closed playtest for Halls of Torment soon. We are opening registration for the playtest now and will invite the first players later this week. If youre excited for the game and want to help us with valuable feedback, head over to the playtest registration (link below, please read it carefully!) and join us.

We are planning to invite new players in waves to get a good coverage, so please be patient after filling out the form.

We are looking forward to hearing your feedback!

--> Register here! (Google Form) <--

Cheers,
Chasing Carrots

Greetings, adventurers!

Only the most courageous or wicked have travelled to the Ashen Cliffsides where the gates to the Halls of Torment are looming over the desolate landscape. Some came in pursuit of riches, some in search of glory. Others believe great sources of wisdom lie shrouded beneath the Halls waiting to be revealed. Others again are sensitive to the great powers emanating from the depths; powers they cannot leave untapped, or worse, squandered on others.

Today we want to introduce the first four player characters in the Halls of Torment roster. There will be many more in the future, but these were the first ones to arrive at the gates and set up camp.

[h3]The Swordsman[/h3]

There are only a few things that can withstand a good swing with a Zweihander. With this in mind a well trained sword-wielder dares to enter the Halls with only light armour. Of all mortals who gathered before the gates the Swordsman impresses with the nimble yet vigorous simplicity of his combat style. All in all hes a well balanced pick when it comes to overcoming the horrors down below.

[h3]The Archer[/h3]

The best defence against a raging horde of unholy creatures is a well-maintained distance. Meanwhile, from a good vantage point a couple of well aimed arrows can do a lot of damage. The Archer is a dexterous ranged fighter who has accomplished mastery in both of these principles. Her creed: Spray death from afar and nothing will get to you. Well see how well this works out for her as the Halls get increasingly crowded.

[h3]The Exterminator[/h3]

The hunt for vermin and pests is the Exterminators daily routine. Equipped with a brazen flame caster they hunt for malicious creatures in cellars and catacombs. Whatever abomination compromises a customers estate, they kill it with fire. A lot of nobles and city councils are paying them good coin for their services. When word spread out about the Halls of Torment, it felt like a natural fit for them to join the camp.

[h3]The Shield Maiden[/h3]

As a member of the Sorority of the Protector the Shield Maiden is an expert in personal defence. Armour-clad and equipped with a warhammer and shield no one in their right mind would dare to assault her head-on. Luckily, prudence is a rare commodity down in the Halls. The Maiden regards the cleansing of those accursed depths as her holy duty, as any hellspawn escaping the Halls of Torment may become a threat to the innocent.

Welcome to the Halls of Torment!

Whats this, a new game? Indeed it is! And before I get into any details of what it exactly is and how its made, I think its important to explain how we got here in the first place. During the past five years weve made our previous game Good Company. Although it did find its wonderful audience and is still maintained, we felt a certain fatigue setting in. This journey towards the first 1.0 release was a taxing one and it had an immediate impact on how we thought about future projects. We want to learn from our past mistakes and achievements and so, long story short, we decided to do the following three things with our next game:

Limit the projected development time to a minimum and adjust the scope appropriately. In the ballpark of six months became our rule of thumb for a manageable project length.


Weve made many rounds of internal game concept pitching and prototyping. Many of our ideas could not satisfy the constraints outlined above.

And then Vampire Survivors came along and demonstrated how its done. Naturally, such a successful game would give rise to plenty of imitators. At first we hesitated. We didnt want to jump on the bandwagon. But the more time we spent with this newly hatched genre, the more it seemed like a very good fit for us. And so, we sat down, we made a plan, and we made sure its in line with our three goals mentioned above.

So *clears throat*



As you mightve guessed already, Halls of Torment is a reverse bullet hell roguelite in the vein of Vampire Survivors and similar games with light RPG elements. However, we wanted to put our own spin on the genre. We are big fans of old school action RPGs and CRPGs. Those games from the late 90s with their specific pre rendered aesthetic evoke warm feelings of nostalgia in us, and were sure that many players feel similarly. We wanted to capture those vibes and include them in Halls of Torment. Our goal is to make a game you can play casually while still enjoying the rich atmosphere of these grandiose role playing games that used to consume a large chunk of our free time during our youths.

I hope that we succeed, and I hope youll enjoy it.

All the best!
Paul