To our Early Access players:
While our Launch Overview provides a useful list of what has happened over the past six months at Stoic, it is written for both new and returning players. That makes it harder to get into specific differences and direct responses to player feedback. Reducing that context to a TL;DR or bullet list would also do you a disservice, so we wanted to take a moment to go deeper here.
When we decided to shift Towerborne from a live service game to a standalone premium experience, it wasn’t a decision we made lightly. We knew it would be a change some players wouldn’t be happy about. But it was also the best way to ensure Towerborne could stand on its own as something can keep in your library, take offline, and play anywhere.
Most importantly, thank you to everyone who played during Early Access. You spent real time with Towerborne while it was still evolving, and your feedback, discussions, bug reports, and shared frustrations helped define what this game needed to become. Early Access was a collaboration, and we are genuinely grateful for it.
Everything we learned during that time guided what came next. We revisited nearly every part of the game and added major new content, including a new campaign, a reworked world map, expanded progression and forge systems, class mastery skills, Umbra, new bosses, and more. The goal was simple: to take what Towerborne already was and make it the most complete version it could be.
We know a message like this can’t fully show the care behind that work. The real proof is in playing the game. Still, we want to be direct and walk through a few concrete examples of how your feedback led to meaningful changes.
Motivation
The Early Access campaign for Towerborne is a light touch. It set up enough of a story for us to continue to explore over years, and so it doesn’t tell a clear story on its own. It’s definitely not enough to know your role and goals, and how you affect the world.
When you start a new game, you’ll see that you can select your class at the start. No more all-Sentinel parties at the start. Once you’ve started, you’re thrown into the thick of it: the City of Numbers just as the protective Pylons fail.
All storytelling took place in the Belfry, so it was hard to remember what was going on or why after chewing through so many Discovery missions. We saw some success with the small stories in Chance Encounters, and that showed us what tools we needed in order to shift the focus of our storytelling from the Belfry to the missions.
All players are beginning a 15+ hour campaign spanning over 50 missions. Some of these are bespoke missions with a focus on the story. Many of these missions have an NPC companion, which came from player feedback. They also include small cutscenes, dialog, bespoke environments, and plenty of fighting. The campaign will take you through most of the Ventures, all of the environments, and all of the bosses.
That means we can tell our story as you’re brawling instead of summoning you back for the next conversation. For fans of the Pylon Enthusiast, he’ll be waiting.
Repetition
We use the phrase “grasslands and gobos” to denote how repetitive the game could get. Many of our players saw nothing but this for their first hour.
While it’s fun to explore the map, the forced Discovery missions added some real design challenges. It weakened the story by being a barrier between quest and goal. The randomization caused difficulty spikes that were hard to detect. They forced you into playing several missions with the same enemies, and environments for the same region all blended together.
It was a hard decision, but we chose to remove the hex-based map that expanded as you cleared tiles. The Frontier ventures are still there for those who want the experience, but we’re not forcing players through them anymore. That lets players focus on the campaign while they’re on the map instead of how to get to the next point of it. In doing this, we were able to make each moment of the campaign escalate in a more deliberate and memorable way.
The Bounty Board took over the Request Board, and it is the home of missions that are fun to do but don’t have a home in the story of Towerborne. Bounties are available as soon as you can reach the Belfry, and new ones appear as you complete them and progress through the campaign.
The Bounty Board offers lessons on specific classes in a completely optional setting. There’s no side quest asking you to play every class, and there’s a way to repeat a forgotten lesson. We tie some useful skills and skill points to bounties, and there’s a lot of creative and challenging scenarios. Once you’re through the campaign, check back in with the Bounty Board for truly nasty work.
Starting the game up now comes with a question for you and your friends: what do you want to do? Progress through the campaign? Farm up some gear in Ventures? Earn Writs while playing the Bounty Board? Vibe while doing Frontiers?
Build Hopelessness
Progression in Early Access can feel slow and grinding, sometimes hopeless. The end of a mission can feel punishing when you’re looking for Just One Thing, it doesn’t drop, and that’s clearly the fault of the off-class weapon that did drop. Ya, we experienced that as well.
We long knew that we wanted to add new features to the Forge to address this, and player feedback hit on the same solutions. At DL4, you get access to Fuse, which lets you destroy gear to get new gear. That includes upgrading Spirit Dust, getting new Aspects, and even crafting Legendaries.
At DL5, you get Refine and Reforge, which let you customize an “almost there” piece into “perfect.” Regardless of your opinion on Attack vs Strike Damage vs Affliction Duration, you can make the gear you have into the thing that you want. The loot you’re dismantling becomes the fuel to make it possible.
While these systems still have some randomness to them, it is possible to guarantee results.
We also increased the drop rate of legendary items, and many of them also drop as a weaker version in DL4.
What good is perfect gear without room for buildcrafting? Also following player feedback, we added set weapons to count for set bonuses, boss weapons now have perks instead of being stat sticks, and there’s no limit to the number of legendaries you can have equipped.
With better control over your gear and more routes to explore builds, alongside new challenging missions and difficulty modes, this should feel more like a playground with a purpose than a slog.
FYI - if you’re missing some materials for the Forge, go check out the vendor over by Ogden and Wolfram!
Cosmetics and Grinding
There’s a lot of beautiful cosmetics wrapped up in Curios and Belfry Bucks. Additionally, there’s a lot of beautiful gear that drops that isn’t good for your build. We definitely heard your frustration on both.
No longer being a live service game means no more Belfry Bucks, and so all cosmetics are earned through Writs. We can’t rely on the Request Board and Community Events to earn Writs, and so you’ll see them drop in Ventures, as rewards for completing the campaign, and as Bounty Board rewards. If your goal is to be the coolest Ace around, there’s many routes to that goal, and it all depends on what you’re feeling.
Difficulty helps out here. Playing at higher difficulties will earn more Spirit Dust for the Forge and more Writs for cosmetics, so repeating Krafft’s Gauntlet is well worth your time.
There’s many more cosmetic pieces in the game than in Early Access, from gear sets to Umbra skins to emotes (did you know you can set your own victory and defeat emotes?). The Writs Store is literally bursting with options to make sure you stand out amongst your friends.
And for those who love the look of your novice gear but can’t live without the stats, if you earned the piece, you can use Writs to make a cosmetic version. Go take a look at your Cosmetic menu in your Loadout. No need to dismantle your earned gear!
More Refinements to Class Mastery and Combat
Throughout Early Access we’ve made a lot of improvements to the combat. During that time, we added customizable controls, a brand new class progression system, revamped how Death/Revive works, and improved the look and feel of the moment to moment gameplay.
For the 1.0 release, we really wanted to give the players more of what they liked. Every single combat action has been tweaked to some capacity, for both players and enemies. This includes every hitbox, every cancel window, and every interaction. You can even use Mender’s Flasks in the air now. There’s honestly too many things to list but we’ll try!
There are even more Class Skills to unlock. Some of these Skills are unique to specific classes and can be unlocked by completing challenges in the Bounty Board. In addition to this, we also added new Universal Skills, which give each class unique abilities that only need to be unlocked once. This hopefully makes swapping to different classes a bit of a different experience now where you can do some really cool stuff even at early levels.
We also made improvements to Skill Point distribution in general. Players can now equip even more skills than before and you can even earn additional Skill Points thanks to the Bounty Board. You’ll still have to make some choices on what to bring into battle, but as always, you can freely equip and unequip Skills without consequence to try new ideas.
There’s also a whole new variety of aspects and perks that expand your moveset even more. This includes aspects that modify your Umbra Abilities, Combo Finishers, Focus Skills, and more. On Hard and Brutal difficulties, defeating Vanguards will give you temporary buffs that add even more variety to your playstyle.
Speaking of Umbra, there’s even more of them now and they each bring something new to the table. We can’t wait for you to discover what their abilities are! This is in addition to refining each Umbra so that they feel better to use in general. This includes being able to use more Umbra Abilities in the air, which allows you to do some really neat tricks that were never possible until now.
Co-op gameplay has also been improved. Juggling has been refined so that it’s easier to do team combos together, which includes combos from our NPC allies that join you in battle now! It’s also possible to crawl after being downed by an enemy. We even looked at enemy stats in co-op to make sure that enemies didn’t feel too spongey.
In general, the game should just feel like a blast to play and it’s a night and day difference to something we were already really proud of. Player movement is faster, enemies are smarter, attacks feel even better than they ever did, and there’s even more cool stuff to do now. We really hope you enjoy all the refinements we’ve made!
Final thoughts
Thank you again to everyone who shared feedback during Early Access, especially our Founders. We spent a long time looking at the feedback, data, and learning what worked and what doesn't. We've spent the last 6 months iterating and reworking every part of Towerborne and we hope you enjoy the launch.
If you haven’t already, we recommend checking out the Towerborne Launch Overview, which provides a broader overview of what Towerborne 1.0 is today and helps highlight changes that aren’t called out in detail here.
