After long months of work, update 0.8.3 is available on Steam. This update triples the content compared to the original EA release; playable time is currently 50+ hours.
Again, I must send a big thank you to our Beta Testers, which have navigated all kind of weird bugs through the last week, until the last of them were fixed.
New Content & Character Advancement
- Added a new outdoor region to the south of Urendale, with several dungeons to explore.
- 12 new quests added, raising the total to 46. Chapter two of the main quest can be advanced significantly (but not yet concluded).
- Level cap raised to 6! the new XP cap is 24,000.
- New Open Talents: Second Skin, Gifted Pupil, Adept Student, Arcane Scholar. There's a total of 46 Open Talents in the game now!
- Six new new spells added for the disciplines Conjuration, Gateway, Auspice (available at a vendor in the new area), and also for Order and Malediction (at the Urendale vendors). More spells coming soon.
Performance
- Massive performance optimizations. Framerate should increase by around 25-40%.
- Added a new option to set more exact framerate limits in Settings. Limit framerate can be used to reduce noise/heat in laptops and other systems.
- Added an option to set a separate limit of 60fps in the game's main menu, enabled by default.
- Removed quality setting for Sky & Clouds.
Balance
- Characters gain 2 extra Skill Points at level 1 of any Career, be it at character creation or when a new Career is entered. The points are gained retroactively.
- You can now redistribute your companions' skill points once.
- The armor rating and critical defense provided by several pieces of chain and plate armor have been slightly reduced.
- Geldryn now drop specific items.
- A single Potion of Deep Breath now affects your whole party when consumed. The alchemy ingredients for producing it have been updated.
- Summoned creatures will now despawn if their summoner is killed or incapacitated. Certain enemies can now summon creatures!
- Mycora melee damage and avoidance(deflection) increased.
- The fire vulnerability of certain monsters has been slightly toned down (Druant, Yaksa, Troll).
Gameplay Improvements
- Added an option to order your party inventory and stash by item type. More order options will be added in the future.
- Quests can now be filtered/searched by text.
- Hotbuttons can now be correctly used during combat with keys 0-9.
- You can now press 'Y' to delay your combat turn(can be remapped to any key).
- Enemies aggro range is now variable, depending on their AWA trait.
Bugfixes
- Attacks with 'Armor Piercing' were not correctly applying it. Solved.
- Enemies with shields were in most cases not applying its avoidance bonuses. Beware, they may be harder to hit now, flanking them may be essential.
- Unseal spells will now properly trigger traps in chests.
- Charming an enemy with talents such as "Pack Leader" or "Petty Lord" will now remove the bonus he granted to its followers.
- Fixed the 'Pink People' Bug in Port Galeb.
- Solved an issue that could make most of the game UI texts to go blank, related to the pop up of tutorial windows.
- 'Minimal' quality settings should no longer cause strange displacement artifacts with combat grid.
- Potion of Deep Breath didn't work correctly when a character drank it while already drowning. Fixed.
- Potions capable of recovering willpower will now work correctly.
- Fixed a visual glitch that allowed to briefly see enemies in other rooms when a battle started.
- Essence of Darkness will now restore willpower as expected.
- The game will no longer autosave during dialogues that teleport you, such as with conduits or mages, to prevent issues.
- Screen resolution will no longer reset itself to the highest supported by the system each time the game starts.
- Fixed a visual glitch that could cause dead enemies to remain 'running in place'.
- Flammata Leaves description now correctly states it grants +1 Spellpower, not +2.
- The 'Dodge' description on character window was not showing a correct calculation; fixed.
- Fixed many minor map issues in Urendale and Galeb Peninsula.
- Fixed dozens of small text issues with dialogues, such as typos or minor inconsistencies.
Pricing update
Following my policy of being transparent about the game pricing, I wish to announce a base price increase since May 3rd, going from $19.99 to $24.99 (may vary with different currencies/regions)
Of course this doesn't affect people already owning the game.
From now on, you might find Archaelund participating in Steam sales, but never with a discount that puts the price below the EA launch price ($19.99).
On the horizon
The milestones leading to 0.9 are mostly done with the two large outdoor areas released (one in november, one now), but we're not there yet. The finish line is the conclusion of the chapter 2 of the Main Quest, but also new functionalities such as dual wielding, crossbows, poisons, maybe new careers and character creation options.
The good news is these new additions will come in smaller, more frequent updates! Expect news soon.