Its finally here! A major content update 6 weeks in the making. We have a ton of new content and overall game improvements to get through, so lets get this party started!
:sadhf:NEW HERO: SHAKPANA, THE PLAGUE BRINGER
Shakpana is a voodoo master of poison. All creatures, living or dead fear the glowing stare from his cursed mask. It is said that anything he touches becomes plagued.
*Shakpanas' starting synergies add or increase damage over time for all abilities.
Shakpana is the first to get a HERO ABILITY. PLAGUE BRINGER is an active ability that can be used when the player chooses. He has a unique icon next to the health bar. This ticks up every few seconds and becomes usable when the number reaches 10. It can be charged up to 50. Upon activating, all enemies on the screen are hit with a poison attack, slowing them by 60% and hitting them 3 times for that number.
:sadhf:NEW ABILITY: POISON CLOUD
Poison Cloud is a low damage, crowd control ability that has strong protection and combos well with heavy attack abilities. A cloud grows around the player making a temporary shield that gets thrown in the facing direction when it reaches its full size. Poisoned enemies are slowed and take damage over time. Some enemies are immune to poison.
:sadhf:ABILITY MODS
The primary focus of this update was the inclusion of the Ability Mods. This includes the foundational work to support them going forward, and also the initial mods to get the ball rolling!
Ability mods provide ways to evolve and modify abilities as you progress through a run. Mods are unlockable in the Divinity Web. Each ability will have 2 mods and mods can be combined together to add a lot of new build variety.
The foundational work will allow us to get more mods in a lot quicker in future patches!
How Ability Mods work in Spirit Hunters:
Once unlocked in the Divinity Web, new mod banner choices show up at certain ability levels during a run. Example:
Reaching Tornado level 8 adds Bouncy Wind mod to the random upgrade pool.
Reaching Tornado level 15 adds Chaos Storm mod to the random upgrade pool.
Each mod has a different level requirement that shows in the character/ability select screen.
:BlueOrbus:Tornado - Bouncy Wind: Tornados last longer and bounces off environment
:BlueOrbus:Tornado - Chaos Storm: Tornado changes to shoot a constant single shot in all directions
:BlueOrbus:Spears - Spear Cage: Changes spear formation to spawn in a circle around the player
:BlueOrbus:Spears - Frost Spears: Adds a large freeze chance aura to spears
:BlueOrbus:Tangle Vines - Bomb Pods: Flowers that grow on the vines and explode when they despawn
:BlueOrbus:Tangle Vines - Vine Spitters: Grows turret plants that shoot a stream of piercing projectiles
:BlueOrbus:Poison Cloud - Breaking Wind: Each point in BW shoots an extra gust in a random direction from the main cloud
:BlueOrbus:Poison Cloud - Poison Trail: Leave a puff of poison behind the character. More points spent thickens the trail.
*All abilities will have mods in future content updates.
*All future new abilities will have mods included when released.
:sadhf:ABILITY CHOICES UPDATE
We have updated every ability in the game. Before we had a fixed 25 levels in each ability, so you could choose the order of each upgrade, but any max level ability would always be the same. That has been changed to add more player choice. We added more of certain banner choices while still retaining the 25 level cap. Here is an example:
Before:
Spears - 10 levels in number, 5 levels in damage, 7 levels in CDR, 3 levels in size = 25
Now:
Spears - 25 levels in number, 15 in damage, 7 in CDR, 5 levels in size, 4 levels in Frost Spears, 1 Spear Cage = 57 (still 25 max)
This means now you can fill the screen with +25 number in spears, but they will have low damage, stay small and have a long cooldown. OR you can go crazy high damage, size and CDR, casting a few very large and powerful spears. OR you can use some of your levels on mods to change things up.
You can find some pretty OP combos. How you build an ability is more up to you... but now you can also make some pretty bad choices.
:sadhf:SHURIKEN REWORK
Shuriken got a major speed buff and a gameplay change. Volleys used to last for 4 seconds making it a super strong boss killer, but making it difficult to use through the majority of a run. Now volleys only last 1.6 seconds so it can switch targets much faster. Banner choices and Dweb nodes have been updated to adjust for the changes.
:sadhf:NEW ZONE: HIGHLANDS NORTHWOOD
Welcome to the frigid land of the Frost Trolls. This will be the 3rd and most challenging zone found in the Highlands map and most difficult in the game so far. Beware of the rolling snowballs, very tanky Yak riders and massive swarms of Icesquitos. Some new, very strong minibosses and The largest end bosses with new mechanics will test your spirit hunting skills. With high difficulty comes higher rewards. Expect a great resource multiplier on this one.
:sadhf:NEW MONSTERS
Northwood also have a slew of new monster to fight and unlock in the bestiary.
:ns_blue:Miniboss - Yak-o-Lantern
:ns_blue:Miniboss - Zombie Yak Rider
:ns_blue:Miniboss - Pizza Delivery Troll
:ns_blue:Frost Trolls
:ns_blue:Yak Snowball Rider
:ns_blue:Troll Spear Rider
:ns_blue:Icesquito
:ns_blue:Cold Shellbug
:ns_blue:End Boss: Yak Collosus
:ns_blue:End Boss: Blitzen
:sadhf:SICK BEATS!
We got a sweet new music track from Injekted for the Northwood zone.
If you like the Spirit Hunters music, check out some of his other jams here:
*INJEKTED SPOTIFY*
:sadhf:GAME SPEED IMPROVEMENTS
We did a huge wave of updates to increase the overall speed and pace of the game. All character have been given a speed boost. Abilities move faster, resources move faster to the player, level up choice banners have been sped up. A lot of the enemies move a bit quicker as well. We feel like the overall pace of the game is in a far better state now.
:sadhf:NEW AND IMPROVED ANIMATIONS
We have a load of new monster animations in the game. All the normal mode end bosses have been reworked to give them more life. Plus a bunch of others across the game. Here is the full list of new monsters animations:
:ns_blue:End Boss: Horned Beetle
:ns_blue:End Boss: Horse Knight
:ns_blue:End Boss: Tombstone
:ns_blue:End Boss: Demise
:ns_blue:End Boss: Viper Shaman
:ns_blue:End Boss: Tempest
:ns_blue:End Boss: Yako Colossus
:ns_blue:End Boss: Blitzen
:ns_blue:Frozen Rocky
:ns_blue:Troll Snowballer
:ns_blue:Mega Yako Rider
:ns_blue:Troll Spear Rider
:ns_blue:Spearit
:ns_blue:Frost Troll
:sadhf:NEW STEAM ACHIEVEMENTS
Of course with new content comes new achievements. Enjoy these easy ones for now. With Brutal mode achievements are going to be much more challenging in the future. Bwahahahaha! :jydgedeathshead:
:ns_blue:Unlock Shakpana
:ns_blue:Unlock Poison Cloud
:ns_blue:Unlock Highlands Northwood zone (Normal mode)
:ns_blue:Unlock Highlands Northwood zone (Hard mode)
:sadhf:MENU UPDATES
A bunch of new icons, tooltips, text and changes have spawned across the menus in the game. Here is a list of all the things... thanks in advance for helping us find all the new typos that have come with every one of our menu updates. Making games is hard. Spelling is even harder. :P
:ns_blue:Added a Roadmap button to the title screen. So players can always see where the game is heading.
:ns_blue:Added Hero Ability icons and tooltips to the character select screen (Shakpana only for now)
:ns_blue:Added Mod icons and tooltips to the character select screen
:ns_blue:New Divinity Web description updates
:ns_blue:New Oracle dialogue lines
:ns_blue:Updated choice banner wording improvements
:ns_blue:New Bestiary stats and descriptions
:sadhf:PET VFX UPDATES
A few pets got some much needed visual clarity to match up with their gameplay.
:ns_blue:Nomicron - Now has a clear attack visual tied to its level up damage range.
:ns_blue:Scoop - Now has a clear dig visual.
:ns_blue:Hearty - Now has healing VFX added to the heart drop.
:sadhf:OTHER STUFF
Some extra little things that make the game better
Immunity popups for freeze and poison when an enemy is... immune
:ns_blue:Level up VFX updated
:ns_blue:Continued localization prep work for future updates
:ns_blue:Reworked damage dealing on larger enemies to provide a better and tighter experience.
:ns_blue:Pushing escape in bestiary now goes back to Divinity web rather than main menu.
:ns_blue:More Moon Mummy
:jydgedeathshead: OBLIGATORY MOON MUMMY BUFF :jydgedeathshead:
Moon Mummy moves 10% faster (we didn't tell him that other minibosses also got speed updates)
He found out about Shakpana and the Poison Cloud updates then demanded poison immunity. Of course, he is also hidden somewhere in the new Northwood zone because he complains if he is left out of any location.
As always, we will be continuing to hunt down and exterminate as many bugs as we can. We are happy to see the list shrinking as we tackle all the little issues that pop up.
:al_bug:Bug: Fixed an issue where abilities would fire off while loading into the game.
:al_bug:Bug: Bosses now face the way they die…as it should be.
:al_bug:Bug: Fixed missing collision in Hinterlands zone
:al_bug:Bug: Arrow and other projectiles now move at a standard speed no matter the direction.
:al_bug:Bug: Hopefully a fix for a hard-to-replicate bug where certain SFX could start spamming.
:al_bug:Some spelling mistake fixes
:al_bug:Bug: Fix for a possible way to get stuck in hardcore mode, where pushing escape would not take you back to the main menu when starting a new hardcore mode play-through.
:al_bug:Bug: Put a certain missing punk into the bestiary where they belong.
:sadhf:HOT FIX
:al_bug: Bug:03.11.2022 - Fixed issue where some level up banners were not showing decimal numbers correctly,
SO WHATS NEXT???
This was a HUGE patch. The next one is going to be a lot smaller and more focused so it should be out much quicker. For the next one, we will be focusing on getting the active HERO ABILITIES done for Magnus, Maxine, Vivian, Hugo and Conrad. This will add some extra gameplay variety to the different heroes.
Thank you again to everyone for the amazing ongoing support for Spirit Hunters: Infinite horde. We sincerely hope you are enjoying the game and are as excited about the future content as much as we are.
If you are enjoying the game and updates, please consider leaving a review on steam. ːsteamthumbsupː
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