[previewyoutube=ywKI4kS0HEU;full][/previewyoutube] For saves issues - if you experiment saves issues because you did not play for a long time, please check our guide about how to get back your saves. We had some saves lost when changing the way we store the saves + when integrating Cloud saves, thanks for your understanding! That's it, the fourth and final world of Astral Ascent is available right now, here is a list of what to expect -

New Hero - Calie the Geomancer

This new playable Hero is coming with an unique narration and gameplay!
She fights with Gems that she can shape into anything she wants. That's right, she can create a massive 2 hands sword then a long range bow!
Her Basic attacks are mid-range AOE hitting Gems so she is very good at cleaning pack of enemies very quickly!
When her Signature Spell is ready, her Basic Attacks leave crystals on the battlefield. Then, she can recall them by using her Signature Spell, dealing damage to enemies in between and gaining mana points like a regular attack. Be strategic and aware of your crystals placement to maximize your damage and mana for better spell rotations!
Her Perks are focused on the Crystals she leaves on the battlefield, her crystals can have effects when recalled or change shape to trigger an effect like fire crystals creating combustion as below.

The Crimson Highlands

The Crimson Highlands is the last world of your Astral Ascent runs and it is also the most dangerous one.
The enemies there won't be forgiving any mistakes and you better be ready for what is coming!

2 New Zodiacs : Libra & Aquarius

The Crimson Highlands is also the land of the 3 most dangerous Zodiacs - Aquarius, Libra & Gemini and you can now face 2 of them, Libra & Aquarius.
Libra is one of the most dangerous being in the Universe and she will be testing your agility and reflexes.
On the other end, Aquarius is a bit special, they are a golem and a child bound together, they will be testing your stamina & concentration.
New Zodiacs also mean new challenges, new summons & new zodiac spells! Getting them by your side can be a precious help as you can see with Libra summoning below.

Fifth world

If you success to defeat Libra or Aquarius, you will have a teasing of the final boss, the Master of the Prison and you will be able to fight him in the Final Release. Based on this world and statue you might be able to guess who he is! Also, in the final release, before the final boss you will be able to spend your last quartz, stars & everything to be as prepared as possible for the fight!

Run progressions change + Telluric Ruins

We have changed a lot of things regarding the progression of your runs, from your feedback and our own experience we thought we had too much of everything and it made runs and building confusing. What we did is first is creating rules for the special rooms so they cannot appear randomly anywhere in order to have a better control on the runs. We have also greatly reduced the amount of Spells, Gambits and Slot unlockers that you drop but made the merchant much more central in the game experience.

• The Minibosses are not always there.
• The Echo Islands are now a reward for defeating minibosses and do not require keys to get there anymore.
• Exploration rooms rewards are now Quartz, Auras & Gambit and you cannot have multiple auras or gambit at once.
• Merchants are always there in first room of worlds.
• Astral Key chests are now limited to one per exploration but they have been reworked (see below).
• Andromeda's drinks are not increasing anymore so you are not too penalized if you are taking a healing room before a boss.
• Healing rooms can now spawn more frequently depending of your current HP.
• Healing Altars now use stars instead of Quartz so you can still create your build at the merchant.
• Salvaging Auras now grant 4 stars so you get Andromeda drinks if you are unhappy with your dropped Aura.
• The new forge Room is not in world 1 but there is a special room to get an extra spell from the beginning there now - The Telluric Ruins

There are more change to come obviously, we want to make the Auras much more central, be able to get rarities on them and to make them synergize better with our builds.

The Forge - a new room Type

A new addition to this update is the Forge, a room that let you choose one of these bonuses - +1 to all your spells level Pick one new spell among 3 choices Unlock a locked gambit slot on all of your spells Given the progression changes we made, this room gives you more control on your builds and became very important!

New Gambit rewards

Zodiacs rewards has been changed and they now only drop gambits, mythic ones! But this update introduces a new rarity for gambits - The Astral Gambits.
They are very rare drops that can only be dropped by Zodiacs and they can completely change your builds as they are really powerful. For example one of them create several saplings on each hit as you can see below.

Chamaeleon's Lottery

Lottery has also been changed, our point of view is that too many systems were facing each others instead of working together. The lottery that used to work with Stars was preventing you from using the stars at Andromeda's bar and some players would only use it or always ignore it. So we decided for the Lottery to be a free bonus appearing randomly once in a run in an intro room giving you some currency. We might change his position later!

Stone Altars & Key Chests rework

First thing first, we decided to change the Key Chests reward. They used to ask you for 1 key (few quartz + a bit of heal/mana) or 3 keys (to randomly get a Stone Altar or an Aura). We thought it felt bad to sometimes have unwanted Auras and sometimes have unwanted Stone Altars so Auras are now Exploration rooms rewards and Key Chests are now randomly Pavo Feathers or Stone Altars chest, then you select if you want to use 3 or 5 keys in it.

• Using 3 keys will give you access to 1 Stone or a Pavo Feather +1 (level one of your spell, each level adds 20% damage to your spell).
• Using 5 keys will give you access to 2 Stones or a Pavo Feather +2.

Also, to give you more choices when selecting stones, the Stones Altar will now have 6 choices instead of 3, the 3 new choices are -

• Armor points, each of them reduce the damage taken by 2
• Critical hits, each of them increase all your crit chances by 2
• Mana Max, each of them increase your max mana by 1

Same applies to Andromeda's bar and both drinks are reset when one is selected.
These change allow you to have a better control of the reward you select and a more steady progression on your spells level. It also removes the randomness of the reward as you know what is the reward before using your keys.

Co-op Balancing Changes

Co-op players have been requesting for a long time for a better co-op experience loots and progression. Here is a list of what we changed -

• Explorations rooms now give twice the rewards in co-op
• Forge & Telluric Ruins give twice their bonus in co-op
• Echo Island allows you to take 2 Echoes in co-op
• Merchant quartz price is reduced by 40% in co-op so you can buy more elements
• Minibosses & Zodiacs rewards are doubled in co-op

We hope these changes will make your runs more enjoyable!

What is next?

So that is it for this Update, at least for the main elements, you can check the Patch-Notes of version 0.41 for more details - https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1280930/view/3672157322349859720 Now that we have our 4 main worlds it becomes much easier to balance the global experience and we know a lot of things still require our attention on the coming months. We are still planning a Q3 2023 release for the final version (to be confirmed) so we will use this time to do frequent smaller updates, some of the things we would like to improve/expand before final release -

• Minibosses fights and number
• Elites modificators
• Zim-Zim improvements
• New Game Plus System (giving the Moon Currency a purpose)
• Rework and improve Auras system
• Improve Heroes perks building

And many more things! Thanks again to everyone following us during this journey and thanks for your support which means everything to our small self-publishing team! Hoping you enjoy this update and have a great day, - The Hibernian Workshop Team