This new Update is a game changer for late game experience and we are super excited to finally make it available for everyone to play! Full Patch-Notes of 0.45 https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1280930/view/3681178469567255745 This Update adds more than 150h to the game for those wanting more challenges and it keeps the progression you made in previous Early Access version! There is a lot to share and won't be able to cover everything in this News post but here are the main things you may want to know -

Path of Destinies

We released Astral Ascent in Early Access back in April 2022 (feels like forever ago...) with a system named the Path of Destinies allowing you to keep playing the game with an increasing difficulty. Everytime you would defeat a Zodiac in a difficulty you didn't defeat them in yet, you would receive a Destiny Fragment, an unique currency that would not allow you to buy anything and the maximum Destiny Level was 12, at each level you would need to select from 1 to 3 maluses and keep going as much as you could. Basically only a few very talented players succeed to beat Destiny Level 12 with only motivation to overcome a very hard difficulty (and to get a bit more Sun Pieces to spend in Zim-Zim shop).
Path of Destinies rework main objectives were :

• Interesting - each element has to have an interesting effect
• Easy to understand
• Accessible start
• Hard end

You now have 54 Destiny Levels instead of 12, you need to success (beat Libra or Aquarius for now) the 6 first Destiny Level to progress to next one. The 6 first ones being :

• Destiny Level 1 -
  
  
  
• Destiny Level 2 -
  
• Destiny Level 3 -
  
  
• Destiny Level 4 -
  
• Destiny Level 5 -
  
• Destiny Level 6 -
  
  
  
  

Once you suceed to beat Destiny Level 6, you can freely increase the Destiny Level as much as you want up to Level 54 (Do not worry, you can lower your Destiny Level anytime!) with many elements to choose from -
This is how Destiny Fragments loot works, each Zodiac owns 1 Destiny Fragment per Destiny Level, Master of the prison owns 3 per Destiny Level (available on final release).
With the 54 Destiny Levels it means you can find 810 Destiny Fragments(12*54 + 3*54) and we offer an additional 10 when you success a run for the first time so, on final version you could get a total of 820 Destiny Fragments, maximum 486 on current version. The way it works is that if you beat a Zodiac at a Destiny Level, you will unlock their Destiny Fragment of the the lowest Destiny Level available. For example, you are Destiny Level 10 and you already have collected 4 Taurus Destiny Fragments - you could beat Taurus 6 times at Destiny Level 10 and still get new Destiny Fragments but then it would stop. Also, if you have Zodiacs that have no Destiny Fragments available for you, game in Destiny Levels will always prioritize making you face Zodiacs you can get Destiny Fragments from. We would still recommend to increase slowly Destiny Level so you can collect Destiny Fragments and improve your Void Catalyst (explained lower). Additionally, in the top part of the Path of Destinies, you can see this -
Each Destiny Level increase the Damage, Max HP of Enemies and Zodiacs. At NG+6 they reach +30%, including the +20% of NG+4. From then it will keep increasing faster, at NG+54 you will have:

• Enemies +150% Damage
• Enemies +200% Max Life
• Zodiacs +300% Damage
• Zodiacs +300% Max Life

It looks really hard (even more with all additional maluses) and you may not really be sure of the point of putting yourself in such a bad situation but do not worry, both of these questions get answers in a brand new major system you can see below!

Void Catalyst

This system is completely new and it will allow you to use the Destiny Fragments you collect during your Destiny Levels runs. This system is mainly linked to Final Boss - the Master of the Prison but for now we made it spoiler-free and you only need to defeat Libra or Aquarius once to trigger a quest to activate it.
The way we see it is really : Path of Destinies starts the Chapter 2 of the game, everything will be more intense, you will unlock many things and narrative true endings will also happen during higher Destiny Levels through the Master of the Prison final confrontations. Once activated you can open the Void Catalyst interface, you start with 10 Destiny Fragments and you will need the 820 fragments to have everything maxed out and these upgrades are going to make you so much more powerful and make you change your playstyle too - you can even have different playstyle registered as presets! In final version the Master of the Prison will give you 3 Destiny Fragment per level so a succesful run will give you 7 fragments while you will only get 4 for now, it may feel like the Void Catalyst progression to be a bit slower in this version for now. When you start only one row is available and the more you progress in Destiny Levels the more rows you unlock and you can freely reset your points and attribute them again.
You have a lot of elements you can improve and you can check all of your improvements from Void Catalyst anytime in a new menu from from pause menu, it also displays the Destiny Levels and elements you selected from Path of Destinies -
You can choose from 24 different bonuses to upgrade in the Void Catalyst, we cannot show all of them here so let us show you a few interesting ones -





One goal we had in mind for the Void Catalyst was giving you some elements to fluidity/smooth your runs, that is the case for extra damage on full life enemies but also the possibility to reset Itinerant Merchant choises, increase the number of use of the Aura Upgrader or even get keys by defeating Zodiacs for example.

Zim-Zim rework

Last but not least, Zim-Zim has been reworked too. She now has more upgrades and a few old ones were removed.
Let's focus on a few of the new elements -

Other Elements

We have also improved a lot of things all around like UI elements in the Prowess Tree.
We have also re-activated the Spell Altar by popular request.
Created new Altar for Gambits.
That's it for this update, whole team has so much fun playing this update and we hope you will also have fun doing so and we are genuinely curious of how high you will be able to go in the Destiny Levels! We are sure there is balancing left to do so we would be very happy to have your feedback about it too. Next Update should be mid August and it should add more content to the game and polish many systems that are still requiring our attention. As always, thanks so much for following us and do not hesitate to share the game if you like it! Have a great day and upcoming week-end, - The Hibernian Workshop Team