Hello, Aethermancers! We are simply amazed by all of your support for us and the demo. Thanks to all of you, our demo has reached over 500 positive reviews! Just in time for Steam Next Fest, too. We have also received a lot of helpful feedback, which has already influenced our development of the game. So we hope this update will improve everyone's experience with the demo! That's right, we released an update to our demo, available to everyone now. You can find the complete patch notes below in this news post.

Steam Next Fest

New Monster: Cockatrice

Speedrun Contest

Full Patch notes - version 0.1.1.5

New Content

• New monster: Cockatrice.
  • It can be found as a regular monster in Pilgrimage Path, replacing Warden in its regular monster slot (Warden can now only be encountered as Champion monster in Pilgrimage Path, not as a regular monster).
  • Elements: Fire/Wind.
  • Types: Tank, Burn, Dodge.
  • Signature Trait: Hot Temper: Retaliate: Applies 1 temporary Power to self. On every 10 Retaliates: Also applies 5 Burn to each enemy.
• 2 new Maverick Traits:
  • Electrical Burn (Burn + Dodge): Aura: Whenever an enemy reaches 5 Burn stacks: Deals a Fire/Wind hit with 11 damage to that enemy and applies Dodge to self. Triggers only up to once per enemy per combat.
  • Overwhelming Heat (Power + Burn): On Attack: Applies 1 Burn to target enemy for every Power stack on this monster.
• Added Rare Affixes.
  • Rare Affixes are enhanced versions of standard equipment affixes, offering improved values or having completely new, stronger effects. Previously, these affixes were exclusive to the Torments Blessing interaction.
  • Equipment obtained from loot drops has a 15% chance to replace a normal affix with a Rare Affix.
  • Equipment received from the Knight has a 15% chance to feature a Rare Affix.
  • Equipment bought from the Merchant has a 30% chance to include a Rare Affix.
• We have reworked the mechanics around catching monsters, which we dub the Memento Rework. It affects a lot of gameplay mechanics related to Mementos, Monster Souls, and Monster Shrines. Our goals are to simplify the mechanics, as they caused a lot of confusion, as well as to improve the monster tamer feel of our game. We encourage you to make a new save file to try out the changes yourself, without skipping the tutorial - so that we can get more feedback on these changes. Here is a summary of the changes:
  • The player starts out without any Mementos, except for the chosen Starter. They have to use the Capture Action to build up their roster of monsters. The start of the game (mainly the tutorial) was adjusted accordingly.
  • The function of a Memento is simplified: It simply unlocks the corresponding monster for the player. It doesnt function as a tool to store a monsters Soul anymore.
  • The player no longer needs to collect a monsters Soul to rebirth it.
  • Instead, there is a new generic rebirth resource called Monster Souls. The player starts out each run with 3 of them and can find more of them and use them in different ways (similar to the current Souls tied to specific monsters).
  • Monster Shrines simply offer an amount of random monsters equal to the amount of Souls the player currently has. These random monsters all come from the list of captured monsters. There is no longer a distinction between Free Souls and other rebirth options.
  • Using a Monster Shrine always uses up 1 Monster Soul (meaning you will have 1 less random choice at the next Shrine, unless you get a new Soul along the way).
  • The Soul Gate and Soul Altar were adjusted to use the new Monster Soul resource. Soul Altars will offer a choice of 3 random temporary boons, based on the Types of the players current monster (which means its more likely to get boons that synergize with your monsters).

Small Changes and Improvements

• Tutorials now display dynamic keys (for example, they will now display controller buttons instead of keyboard keys when using a controller).
• Self damaging actions are no longer affected by power/damage buffs and dont cause corruption.
• Added Fog to the tutorial area.
• The meta upgrade shops display long headers better now.
• Added more Tutorial Highlights.
• Added zoom to specific POI during some tutorials / dialogues.
• Improved Monster replacement screen.
• You can now leave the detailed worthiness screen by pressing escape.
• Purging enemy Aether logic is smarter now:
  • It takes not only the target enemy, but also the other enemies into account. But the cancelling the targets action has higher prio.
  • If an action purges multiple Aether at once, it iterates through all possible combinations and picks the best.
• Added an icon for corruption to the UI. The corruption number is now showcased in the exploration HUD, pause menu and monster menu.
• Improved UI visuals for when you go to a new area, to the Victory screen and to the Defeat screen.
• Adjustments to Rebirth Menu visuals.
• Improved readability on event textbox.

Type, Monster & Skill Balancing Changes

• A few tweaks to help out some of the weaker monsters:
  • [strike]Orthrus: Base health increased to 35 from 30.[/strike]
  • Primeval Blight (Tatzelwurms Signature Trait): Crit Chance per Poison stack increased to 3% from 2%.
• The Shield Type was too dominant, so some Shield Type skills were nerfed:
  • Stone Fist: Shielding reduced to 2 x 3 from 2 x 4, and base damage reduced to 14 from 15
  • Glacier Shield: Shielding reduced to 2 x 4 from 2 x 6
  • Lightning Shield: Shielding reduced to 1 x 5 from 2 x 3
  • Emergency Response: Threshold for extra Shielding reduced to 50% from 60%
• To make Healing Actions more worthwhile to use, almost every Healing Action has been buffed - either with stronger healing or additional utility, or both:
  • Refreshment: Heal increased to 3 x 6 from 3 x 4 and now applies 1 Regeneration to all allies instead of 2 Regeneration to only the target ally
  • Breeze: Heal increased to 3 x 5 from 3 x 4 and Aether cost changed to Fire/Wind from Wind/Wind
  • Healing Slime: Heal increased to 3 x 6 from 3 x 4
  • Natural Cure: Heal increased to 3 x 6 from 3 x 4 and amount of Debuffs and Corruption cleansed increased to 4 from 3 each
  • Cleansing Rain: Heal increased to 2 x 5 from 2 x 4, amount of Debuffs cleansed increased to 4 from 2, and Corruption cleansed increased to 2 from 1
  • Blood Drain: Heal increased to 3 x 4 from 3 x 3
  • Vampiric Seed: Heal increased to 2 x 4 from 1 x 6
  • Windfall: Heal increased to 2 x 6 + 1 x 6 from 2 x 4 + 1 x 4
  • Power Brand: Heal increased to 3 x 5 from 3 x 4 and amount of temporary Power Stacks increased to 3 from 2
  • Nature Guard: Heal increased to 2 x 6 from 2 x 4 and Corruption cleanse increased to 3 from 2
  • Healing Brew: Heal increased to 2 x 5 from 2 x 3
  • Volcanic Essence: Heal increased to 3 x 7 from 3 x 4
  • Rain of Life: Heal increased to 4 x 5 from 4 x 4
  • Toxic Healing: Heal increased to 3 x 4 from 2 x 5
  • Bonfire: Burn stacks increased to 2 from 1
  • Healing Dust: Heal increased to 2 x 6 from 2 x 5
  • Elixir: Heal increased to 2 x 6 from 2 x 5
  • Foreboding Rain: Terror stacks increased to 2 from 1
  • Snow Support: Heal increased to 2 x 6 from 2 x 5
• Some Poison Type skills were buffed:
  • Plague: Now applies Poison to all enemies, instead of all other enemies
  • Proliferate: Damage increased to 5 from 4
  • Fatal Upkeep: Debuff Damage Bonus increased to 4 from 3
  • Polluted Aether: Damage increased to 6 from 5 and Poison stacks increased to 6 from 5
• Mephisto was both one of the monsters with the highest win-rate for players, as well as one of the deadliest to end player runs on the enemy side:
  • Schadenfreude: Dodge chance reduced to 6% from 10%
• Other changes:
  • Haste Dodge chance increased to 12% from 8%

Bug Fixes