We are proud to announce the name and theme of the upcoming 0.9 content update. Update 0.9 will be the biggest content update Striving for Light has ever seen!
"Descent"
With the upcoming content update traces of a new ore have been found in the vast lands around Ankerath. The ore was a shimmering hue of blue, as deep and mesmerizing as the sky. News of the discovery spread like wildfire. It's told that some light fragments formed the ore when colliding at the great scatter.
The lands are transforming. Where once there were meadows and forests, now wooden scaffolds shadowed the ground. The clang of hammers and pickaxes became a constant echo as mine shafts, like scars, began to appear, burrowing deep into the belly of the earth, driven by the insatiable hunger for the new ore. No one thought we would awaken these ancient dormant terrors...
In Descent you will find frequent tunnels that lead into the belly of the earth. Construct mine shafts and install defense upgrades to defend yourself and your mine shaft from the awakened horrors to descent and digg for skygems.
Prolong and intensify your descent to maximise the risk and reward of your expedition into the deep!
New Trinket System
The upcoming content update will introduce a new item type: Trinkets. Trinkets come in 4 different types and can not only grant you passive stat improvements but also active and passive abilities. So lets take a look at the different trinket types. You will be able to carry 4 trinkets at the same time and you can combine them freely as you see fit.
Legendary Trinkets
Legendary Trinkets are the rarest and most powerful trinkets you can find. These trinkets do not only hold passive stat improvements but also an unique active or passive ability that you can gain by meeting the trinket power requirements. These are indicated by colored circles that stand for other trinket types you need to have equiped to gain the ability. In general legendary trinkets belong to no color and do not count towards meeting the requirements for other trinkets.
Once you have met the requirements you can use the new active abilities by the right mouse (or assigned) button. Active Abilities have a cooldown that requires to empower the trinket by a certain amount of enemies that have to be defeated. The active abilities can be everything from shapeshifting into a new form, a temporal shield preventing you to receive damage, berserker auras or massive new attacks.
Normal Trinkets
Normal trinkets are colored blue (defensive), red (offensive) and green (utility) and can hold a variety of stats but also passive effects. Those trinkets are required to activate the abilities on the legendary trinkets. While the active abilities from legendary trinkets are powerful they might not be best for all builds. Some builds will benefit more from stacked passive effects from normal trinkets or even combining multiple legendary trinkets without activating the legendary ability. The possibilities are endless.
We are planing to add a huge amount of different trinkets with the upcoming content update to bring a huge variety of new build possibilities to explore. Here are some of them to give some hints on what will await you.
These trinkets can be aquired all throughout the world but also in the new descent events.
What comes next?
This only marks a fraction of all the new content that will be included in the Descent content update. You will be able to use the new skygem currency to descent into several brutal mini dungeons. There are plans for a new world event. We are currently experimenting with awakened gatekeeper bosses that you will call once you dived deep enough into the darkness. There might even be a complete new map. And this is just the new content, we not even have talked about all the improvements that will come to the existing content like reworked range combat with overall faster projectile speeds to make range attacks feel more responsive.
Please note that all of what we have showed you here is subject to change as we are still full in active development for all of the new content. Abilities, names and stats might change as we see fit. Also since the scope of this update is huge and we want to make sure everything is polished and enjoyable on the update release day this will still need some time to cook until its ready.
We want to thank you for your patience and the ongoing support! If you want to stay up to date with the ongoing development and chat with fellow players about the new update, you are invited to join our discord.