While the last few updates have been focused on new, patch 0.9.5 is all about more and brings the biggest slew of new content since the game's launch!
EXPANDED SKILL TREES
Patch 0.9.5 expands the levelling system introduced in the Mastery Update by adding a fourth branch to each individual skill tree! These new skills are designed to address some balance concerns, cover for weaknesses and increase the overall flexibility of each hero, allowing for even more viable party combinations.
Some of the existing abilities have also been repositioned to better fit their respective branch thematically. Since these changes are pretty significant, you'll get a free skill point reset the first time you launch your old save file. Further skill resets can now be purchased from the Master, so feel free to experiment with your builds!
NEW ITEMS
Expand Update introduces six new item types to be found and used during questing. These generally provide access to previously unavailable (or rare) effects such as debuff immunity or summoning minions.
Three of the new items create very powerful effect against a specific monster family, building upon changes made in the last major update and allowing for more conscious loadout selection for any particular challenge.
ENDGAME QUESTS
More powerful heroes require more difficult content and Expand Update introduces a large amount of new, highly demanding (and rewarding) quests: from condensed challenges, through prolonged endurance runs, to a brand new story quest line.
Some of this high level content is only available in the most dangerous areas reachable through the new "Hopeless" difficulty journey, so make sure to take some risks!
EXPANDED STORY
This update features 25 new story segments, nearly doubling the available narrative content in Bonfire!
New scenes include more of the usual skits and party banter, but as the game gets closer to its conclusion, some of them lead into more serious arcs and exploration of individual characters' backstories.
Since the scenes you see depend on the party you're playing with, make sure to try different combinations to find them all.
FULL PATCH NOTES:
NEW CONTENT:
- Fourth branch has been added to each hero's skill tree.
- 25 new story segments were added.
- New high-level story quest line has been added.
- New journey difficulty: Hopeless.
- 7 new challenge quests.
- 4 new bonus quests.
- 3 new errand quests.
- New item: Koshak Whistle
- New item: Chainlace
- New item: Shield Crystal
- New item: Dawn Lantern
- New item: Bottled Hope
- New item: Extinction Event
- New music track exclusive to Endless and Gauntlet runs.
- New miniboss variant: Grand Mournlord
- New miniboss variant: Mournfolk Assassin
- New miniboss variant: Night Stalker
- New elite type: Immune
- 2 new tactics quests to complete.
- Several new encounter types and variants.
- Additional hero barks and quips.
Dev Note: Several new quests come with very hefty XP rewards. Since XP is the most valuable late-game resource, we felt there should be a way to "farm" it aside from repeated Endless and Gauntlet runs.
Dev Note #2: Some new quests also always feature a particular enemy type to further expand on monster families as a mechanic.
Dev Note #3: We hope you enjoy the new music!
BALANCE:
- Erzsi's Necromancy skill power per level increased from 15% to 20%.
- Nadia's Trickery inspiration power reduced from 90-120% to 70-100%.
- Zhu's Booby Trap power reduced from 400% to 350% and halved when used on summons.
- Zhu's Detonator item power reduced from 250% to 220%.
- Bomb item's power increased from 450% to 500%.
- XP requirements for skill level ups have been adjusted.
- Heroes can now gain +5 to all their stats from their skill tree (up from 3).
- New "Hopeless" danger lever has been introduced.
- Maps generally spawn with more exits now.
- Dangerous exits are now more likely to spawn in the late game.
- In general, more quests spawn on each map.
- Area danger tiers and what quests spawn there have been adjusted.
- Errands now grant around twice as much XP.
- Late-game quests now offer larger XP rewards (~100 more usually).
- Snowstorm Summit has had its difficulty slightly lowered to match other quests in its tier.
- The chance to encounter a harder version of a miniboss encounter raised from 33% to 50%.
- Some encounters composition has been adjusted.
- More adjustments to food drop rates (more early on, less later).
- Smarter enemies now won't protect allies who are about to die from DotS anyway.
- Horde encounters have their enemy summon count increased to 5.
Dev Note: Skill level up XP has been adjusted to account for the expanded skill tree. Generally, level ups happen faster on low levels than they used to, but maxing everything should take a lot of time.
Dev Note #2: Changes to the map and quest spawning are intended to allow for more conscious decision making when picking the party activities. It's also easier to get to high level content, provided the player journeys to the high-danger areas.
Dev Note #3: We're generally pretty happy with where the game is now balance-wise. Feel free to crush our dreams and prove us utterly wrong!
GAMEPLAY & QOL:
- You can now reset skill points at the Master for 500 gold.
- Added the option to quickly toggle between all available journeys without having to exit the quest menu.
- Heroes with available skill points now show an indicator when at the camp.
- Expanded save compatibility system with messages detailing any auto-adjustments made.
COSMETICS:
- New weather type.
- Coin collection sound has been made much nicer on high quantities.
- Adjusted the look and animations of reinforcement indicators.
- Several new skill/buff icons.
- "Anime lines" effect added to some actions because hell yeah!
- Some effects and other actions now better follow character's actual height.
- New FX for the Prism item.
- New FX for the Assassinate attack.
- Adjusted Riposte attack FX to fit the character's default attack.
- Changed the font on buff indicators.
- Adjusted sizing for elite bosses.
- Corrected positioning when enemy uses Protect on a boss.
- Wording: changed "Medium" quest danger level to "Moderate".
- Wording: made some skill description clearer.
- Fireflies now correctly react to area transitions.
- Better summon placement during horde encounters.
- Improved flames and chains FX on bosses and other large enemies.
BUG FIXES & MISC STUFF:
- Item power modifier from skills now correctly works on healing potions.
- Fixed incorrect level 3 Inspiration data showing on the hero screen.
- Prevented Cauterise from unintended power boost under specific circumstances.
- Fixed a rare crash related to skills affecting item power.
- Stripey Koshak now correctly incites summoned Koshaks to attack.
- Corrected summon and reinforcement positioning on horde encounters.
- Clicking a summon that overlaps with an item no longer triggers both actions.
- Fixed some issues with gold spawning from chests.
- Max HP recovery now correctly can't heal past the wounded threshold.
- Fixed graphic overlapping when props were placed close to each other.
- Rest prompt now correctly disables input on the map screen.
- Dynamic area generation adjustments now correctly identify low-level parties.
- Fixed enemy tooltip layout from breaking when enemy possesses an additional "boss" action.
- Prevented save compatibility prompts from happening multiple times under some circumstances.
- Fixed issues with flags on the snow areas when on the camp screen.
- Implemented a better system for picking hero pronouns on the errand result screen (crash prevention).
- Fixed sound glitches for the Skull item.
- Fixed some instances of Z-fighting for glimmer chests.
- And many more too specific or minor to list...
FUTURE PLANS:
As always, our immediate focus for the nearest future is going to be on making sure the game is bug free with a rapid hotfix cycle.
Once the dust settles, we intend to launch a smaller update with new runes for each character. They were initially intended to be included in this one, but since their implementation proved to be more difficult than anticipated and everything else was already done, we decided to break it up into two separate patches.
After that, it's back to adding the remaining characters!
We hope you enjoy the additions! If you encounter any issues, would like to check our current development roadmap or make any suggestions, feel free to drop by our community forums. You can also follow me on Twitter or join MoaCube's Discord server for more frequent updates.
-Tom