Greetings, heroes

We have some great news regarding Hero Siege and what is next for the game. As some of you may know, we started a huge overhaul for the game during Q4 of 2022, and we have given it the project name Hero Siege 2.0 or shorter, HS2.0. Hero Siege 2.0 will be a free update for the existing version of Hero Siege! In this post, well tell you about the major changes in the game that you can expect when the update arrives. Currently, we do not have a date for when the update will be released, but we are getting closer to Closed Beta each day, and shortly after that we will have an open beta for everyone who is interested. Both of these betas have a huge impact on how the game will shape out on release, so we welcome you all to join the open beta testing! The PAS team is happy to discuss with all of you if you have questions, ideas and/or feedback in our Discord Server: https://discord.gg/herosiegeofficial HS2.0 Roadmap: Link to Roadmap Lets dive into the changes, shall we?

Art, Zones and Dungeons

We are recreating all of the environmental art from overworld zones to dungeons. With this new update, we get a more streamline art style for the whole game that feels natural to the theme of the game. HS2.0 will see much more dark and ominous visuals than before, creating the perfect atmosphere to battle hordes of various creatures the players may encounter in their journey. Here are some images from each act that have seen rework so far.

Tarethiel Marketplace

Tarethiel Marketplace will see a couple changes. First of all, the market merchant is moved to Act 3 Town, Village of MosArathim. Secondly, not only counting the market, Ruby - as a currency is completely removed, and its replaced by Gold, leaving it as the only currency. Thirdly, the market will see an UI uplift making listings more clear, and user friendly. Last but not least, In addition to gold, players can set runes as a price for items. With the usual gold, players are presented 6 slots where they can pick a rune, and how many of them they are asking for the item. The market taxation does not apply to runes.
This is the prototype screenshot of the new market listing UI.

Classes

We have re-designed and remade each class that is in the game from the ground up. All 19 of our classes have some refined and new unique talents that serve the new face of the game well, along with the synergies between talents. HS2.0 is going to see a shift from chance on hit passives, DOT builds and APS monsters to a more refined skill system, where active talents are the main focus and passive talents support that. For a more in depth look at some of the classes, take a look at our Devlog posts at https://panicartstudios.com/herosiege/?page=devlog!

Combat & Stats

Hero Siege 2.0 is moving towards a more traditional ARPG style combat system with active talents being the main focus, and passive abilities to support them. Players have the option to bind up to 6 different skills to binds of their choosing, and 2 more to the mouse buttons! Stats are also seeing some change, as we have done some overhauling there too. We are removing old damage types such as Wind Damage and Elemental Damage, and we have redesigned how those damages fundamentally work. There are some new stats too, most notably mentioning Attack Rating and Faster Cast Rate which will differentiate itemization between combat and caster builds. We will do a more indepth look at the stat changes and combat system in our Devlog real soon!

Items

Hero Siege 2.0 will feature a full rework to the item system. This includes fully reworking every item in the game with new stats and adjusting it to a brand new system for you to discover.
Frozen Carver in Hero Siege compared to itself in Hero Siege 2.0 Items wont have any upgrades and will instead have all their stats when you find them in-game. Satanic items can drop earlier in the game based on tier and have more varied level requirements, the goal with these changes is to make playing through the game and leveling up a much more exciting and fun experience. Set items have received a huge rework; They no longer change how certain abilities work or increase their damage, instead they now offer a variety of bonus stats and they're no longer class specific, meaning you won't be stuck with a set item that is not for your class during your playthrough! The bonus stats that the sets give are now tied to the amount of set pieces you have, meaning you don't need all set pieces to get the entire set bonus, but they still can be a very powerful combination of items to make your hero even stronger! The new set effects can be found detailed in our roadmap. Runewords have been changed as well, they are now primarily designed to be strong endgame item options that can be unlocked as you level up instead of being locked to max level. Their identities have also been reworked to supplement the new class reworks. For today well share two runewords with you below. The determining factor for a runewords level requirement is now base item requirement and highest needed runes requirement, also you can create them in any level item base (obviously resulting in a stronger item with a S-tier base).
With these changes our goal is to have a wider variety of runewords being crafted to cater to specific builds and needs a player could have. Flowing Sands for example is intended to be used together with the Sand Guardian Illusionist, whilst Mjolner provides powerful buff to Lightning builds.

Inventory & Stash

Large changes were made to the inventory, it will now be visibly more pleasing to look at and you will be able to see all your gathered loot at once as well as use the new charms system. Instead of being able to equip one charm, you can now place them into the golden slots on the right side of the first page of your inventory to equip up to 20 charms at once depending on their size. We think this change will assist the player in obtaining specific stats they might need such as resistances or mana regen. And it will also be a good way to boost existing stats such as Strength or Defense. An image of the new inventory with equipment and charm slots can be seen a bit further down this post. With the addition of a large rework to how the inventory system works in Hero Siege, items now take up a certain amount of inventory slots, reflecting the size of the item while it is in the player's inventory. We also made these sizes smaller than other ARPG games usually do to make more available space for collecting loot. The four empty slots under the belt & rings is the new place youll be able to store your Relics that you find on your journey to protect Tarethiel against evil. Up to four relics can be equipped at once and they can grant the player Stats, Passives and Active skills but have now been reworked to be more unique and powerful than before. Relics can also be upgraded by picking up the same relics again up to a maximum level of four, increasing their effects with each upgrade. Just like the Inventory, the Stash has also been updated to work the same way. Now you can view all the items in your stash with ease.

Augments

Augments are a new mechanic coming to take the place of what we knew as angelic abilities! They'll take the place of the left chest in the zone we all have been before, the Angelic Realm!
Augments offer a variety of buffs to certain abilities, going from more damage, more range, more AOE and some of them even change how the ability works! Each class will have 3 augments at launch, but more will eventually come in the future!
They work similar to the old angelic abilities, but instead of applying to your weapon, augments will be applied to your armor and they can be leveled up to increase their effects.

Guilds

The guild has had the same system for quite some time, so we decided to give the much needed love to this feature! Guilds will no longer be hero bound and the new guilds will now be Account bound instead. Guilds will now have levels and a ranking system, going from 1 to 100 and the ranking will be determined by the guild experience post lvl 100, meaning the guild with the most experience will be top 1, and so on. Guild experience can be acquired by simply playing the game, and there will be daily guild quests to help you in the journey of being the number one! Guild levels also now give Guild Perks! Every 10 levels will give a new perk to everyone in the guild, motivating even more to level up your guild! Guilds also now will finally have a shared stash (which is unlocked at guild level 50), so everyone can easily contribute and directly help your fellow guild members!

Servers

Previously, we have had most of the multiplayer functionality spread out all over the world. But when it came down to saving your online data or logging in, all that traffic happened via our main server, here at the PAS office located in Finland. This has caused issues for a couple reasons: Scalability and latency. Due to our optimization, security and validity of the online communications, the game often needs to wait for a valid response before continuing. That added up with the latency or poor connection, equals problems. To battle this issue, we are introducing account regions with HS2. Existing accounts get to use one (1) free migration to whatever region they wish and new accounts have to choose one before creation. The planned regions are: Europe (PAS Office Server) North America (Cloud) South America (Cloud) East Asia (Cloud) Now, its important to mention that no matter what region your account is, you can still play together with anyone else. These regions also do not have their own Market economy, but rather the Marketplace will be global.