We have exciting news for everybody who is interested in playing a co-op action hacker slasher like none you have ever seen before. Our 1.0 update for Final Stand: Ragnarök is now live! We have been hard at work to get to this point, and with this update, we enter the final phase of Early Access for this game. We can’t wait for you to experience the new features, systems and content Final Stand: Ragnarök has to offer. Among these are improved enemy AI, updated art, overhauled character models, and more that you can read in today’s patch notes. These notes are a summary of what we have been working on up to the launch of 1.0, but it only scratches the surface of all the amazing work the team has done to bring this game to you.
Note: You can read about more in depth changes from these updates by reading our past newsletters here. In the future, these newsletters will also be posted on Steam for ease of access.
Release Notes: Update 1.0
Art
Map Improvements
- Updated Mana and Health pools in Arena and Towers of Vigrith.
- Added terrain and plant diversity to Towers of Vigrith.
- Added a new skybox to Towers of Vigrith.
Champions
- Updated Champions to V2 models.
FX
- Updated 'burning' and 'frozen' FX applied to Champions and NPCs.
Audio
- Improved soundbank memory usage to improve performance.
- Added voice acting for dialog in Arena and Towers of Vigrith.
- Various updates and adjustments to menu screens and Champion SFX.
UI
- Added additional tabs to the store front to support new cosmetics.
- Added a “shielded” status to final bosses.
- Various visual updates to menu screens.
- Added player reporting system found in the match menu.
Gameplay
- Updated Champions’ ultimate cooldown timers and Mana costs.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where occasionally Champions would immediately die instead of entering a downed state.
- Fixed a bug where the scenario summary page might not show the correct amount of XP gained.
- Fixed some cases where alert stars were not created for rewards obtained through a quest.
Release Notes: Previous Updates
Major Features
Matchmaking
- Reduced matchmaking times by improving server connectivity and reconnection systems.
- Players can now form groups and queue into matchmaking as a team.
Performance
- Improved performance and reduced latency in both the Towers of Vigrith and Arena scenarios.
- Improved terrain’s level of detail to persist at greater distances.
Storefront
- New customization options are now available for Champions on the storefront.
- Ghostly skins and weapons are now available for all Champions.
- New ‘dance’, ‘cheer’, ‘laugh’, and ‘scared’ emotes available for all Champions.
- Added a new Battle Pass menu to offer free and premium reward options to customize your account and characters. The Battle Pass can be progressed through playing the game, completing quests, or earning XP potions.
- While the framework for the Battle Pass is in place, it is not yet implemented - but will be in the near future!
Miscellaneous
- Added an emote wheel where players can equip multiple emotes.
Art
Scenarios
- Updated and made general improvements to map structures and set decorations in Arena and Towers of Vigrith.
- Updated visual appearance of Towers and trees.
Champions and Combatants
- Added customizable Champion sprint FX.
- Updated the Fire Giant King’s visual appearance.
Animation
- Improved animation rigs to better support projectile aiming and projectile accuracy.
- Added new crawling animations for downed characters.
Quality of Life
Bad Actor Management
- Players can now be muted in text and in voice through the in-game match menu.
AI
General Behavior
Improved enemy behavior when in large groups so that they better surround their opponents.
- Improved obstacle avoidance and navigation in tight spaces and around objects.
- Improved the lure behavior for enemy combatants around movement.
- Improved flying AI pathfinding and navigation.
- Updated behavior to reduce number of idle combatants.
FX
Status Effects
- Improved poison FX to both Champions and NPCs.
Miscellaneous
- Added damaging feedback FX to summoning portals.
Audio
Dialog and Voice Over
- Added additional dialog to describe objectives and NPCs in scenarios.
System Sounds & Music
- Added audio to the Champion selection screen, sound effects, and more.
- Updated SFX for Champion Mods.
- Added damaging feedback audio cues to summoning portals.
- Improved footstep and landing audio.
- Added a new musical theme to the summary screen.
- Updated Aella’s main attack audio.
- Updated main menu music and loading screen music.
- Improved accuracy of volume sliders in the settings menu.
UI
Game UI
- Updated Champion Mod progression page.
- Updated loading screen image.
- The compass is now populated with points of interest including objectives and bosses.
- Added UI notification when autorun is enabled.
- Improved UI flow and readability for the Battle Pass menu, match summary menu, and more.
- Damage numbers are now available and can be activated in the settings menu.
System UI & Experience
- Improved 4k display support.
- Standardized all fonts in the game.
- Added ‘Advanced HUD’ to the options menu to track team and NPC counts.
Gameplay
Combatants
- Added Corpse Giant mini boss combatant.
- Added spiders and three variants, Poison, Ice, and Fire.
- Added Shadow Wraith and two variants, Flame and Treasure.
- Added Frost Giant mini boss combatant.
General Gameplay
- Added a final boss wave, Fire Giant King Slozas, to Towers of Vigrith.
- Players will now earn XP after each match based on their performance and objectives completed.
- In the Towers of Vigrith scenario, some objective towers now require activation as a wave ending event.
- Time and dialog between waves has been reduced to improve the flow of matches.
- Arena has been added to the map rotation.
- Added a Healing Tower to Arena that will revive downed Champions and restore all Champions’ health.
- Random item chests have been added to Arena.
- Towers are now activated by interaction instead of player positioning.
- The number of Frost Giants in a wave now scales to the number of players in the match.
- New items have been added to the battle chests.
- The Mana Runestone, a deployable item which creates a temporary field which restores mana over time for any players within it.
- Added warning dialog for when a tower reaches half health.
- Enemies will be cleared at the end of each wave in the Towers of Vigrith scenario.
Champions
- Overhauled Aella’s ultimate to now increase damage to multiple opponents after they are stunned.
- Players now have unlimited stamina to sprint with for a period of 35 seconds between waves.
- Added Champion Mods to Champions to customize your playstyle
- Champion Mods alter how you play a given character, from switching passive effects to changing how your active abilities work entirely.
- Champion Mods are initially locked and will require XP with a given Champion to unlock.
- Activate your mods in combat by collecting Heroic Rune pick-ups from combatants and battle chests.
- Champions can now enter a downed state when they hit 0 health and can be revived by a teammate.
- Champion damage boosts are now applied correctly across all layers.
- Jalb’s Retaliation ability will now taunt enemies at close range.
Bug Fixes
- There have been a number of improvements made to increase performance and reduce latency. While we haven’t completed the full suite of improvements we’d like to make, there should be noticeably better projectile aiming and ability timing.
- Several Champion Mods have been tweaked for balance and better functionality.
- UI improvements have been made to accommodate new progression menus as well as fix potential issues with unhandled state transitions.
- An issue where Champions were unable to use or place items has been resolved.
- A bug that was causing the music for Frost Giant waves to not play correctly has been resolved.
- Major code updates to how interactions work.
- Fix for an issue that caused Jalb's Purifying Flames to sometimes remain active after the intended ability length.
- Enemy NPCs now properly attack barricades again.
- Fix for an issue that allowed you to be healed while down, which put your character into an unintended state where you had health but were still incapacitated.
- Dialogue no longer is filtered when downed, making it a lot clearer when a Champion is waiting for a revive.
- Fix for Gwen’s Inspire ability SFX being too loud.
- Jalb’s Purifying Flames ability SFX adjusted to loop properly and change pitch while he is moving.
- Various audio bug fixes for SFX volume, SFX not playing when they should, and SFX that played at a specific volume regardless of the player's sound settings.
- Major FX Cleanup pass - this fixed up a lot of our data to be more precise about what FX a status should play (VFX, SFX, both, neither) and fixed issues where sometimes the wrong FX would play.
- When an item swaps which model it uses, shader effects on the original model are no longer lost.
- Fixed the boss icon so that it is properly centered vertically in its UI.
- Fixed the colors of the pool icons when they appear on the compass to match their in-world icons.
- Fixed a bug which caused the UI to fetch the player's profile too many times.
Final Note
With FS:R 1.0 now live on Steam Early Access, we knew it was important to list all of the improvements and changes we’ve recently made. Rest assured that we have much more content coming in the near future, and going forward you can expect to find patch notes for every update right here on Steam. You can also read about past updates in more detail (and all future major updates) by subscribing to our FS:R newsletter. We can’t thank you enough for your support, and we are happy to have entered the final phase of Early Access.
Over the next few months you can expect a host of new features - the first look at a brand new scenario, numerous bug fixes, and changes based on feedback from you, our players. We want to hear what you would like to see added to FS:R and what you think about incoming changes as well. While this is something that so many developers say, we will prove we’re the kind of developer that actually does want to hear and engage directly with feedback. FS:R is a fun game right now, but like every game it needs to (and will) continue to improve in order to give you what we promised - a co-op action hacker slasher unlike anything else out there. And what you’ll never see from us are exploitative loot crates or anti-player practices. What you will see is a lot of fun, and for every bump on the road in this journey we can promise that things won’t be dull.
Thanks again, and we look forward to seeing you in game!