Hello Survivors! :cozyroe:
The Unholy Cathedral, our 12th major update is finally here, and this update brings a lot of new content and improvements, including a new game mode, major ascensions changes and a lot of performance improvements!
New Game Mode - The Unholy Cathedral
- Venture into the Unholy Cathedral and face a challenge like none before! You will need to master each character, exploring all the possible builds and variations that they bring, all culminating into an epic battle against the heretic himself!
Major Ascension improvements
- While Ascensions are meant to be different, our goal is to make sure that all ascensions are incredible power boosts during a match and always interesting to go after. With that goal we have implemented major improvements to a few ascensions that were in dire need, you can check out all the changes below!
New Artifact Powers
- The Barbarian and the Sentinel now have access to brand new powers with their Artifact Weapons! These powerful skills become available whenever you upgrade their weapons to the Artifact rarity and can provide a significant boost to power! More artifact powers will be coming with future updates!
Performance improvements (more still coming)
- This update brings the first step into a ton of upcoming performance improvements. Hopefully you will notice that the gameplay is smoother including in deeper endless runs. The game should use considerably less memory an overall feel better to play. There are still major performance improvements coming (such as the collision detection we mentioned in our devlog, which is still not present in this update), so keep an eye for the next update!
New Skill Trait: Cunning
- Multiple Summon skills now have the new Cunning trait, where units summoned prioritize high value targets such as Elite enemies and Lords of the Void. This trait is now commonly found in most damage focused summon skills and should make summoning skills even more powerful than before.
Ascension changes:
- The Necromancer and all of its summons now gain multiplicative stats based on how many abominations are currently active, making it considerably stronger than before;
- The Death Knight and all of its summons now gain multiplicative stats based on how many Ebon Knights are currently active, making it considerably stronger than before;
- The Beastmaster’s footprints now have a tracker even when they are on your screen, making them much easier to find. They are now also closer to each other, and avoid being too close to walls;
- The Beastmaster now requires 8 footprints, down from 10, to spawn exotic beasts. Exotic Beasts now have the Cunning trait as well, making them considerably stronger than before;
- The Pyromancer now gains concentration twice as fast, and loses half as much when taking damage;
- The Pyromancer’s skill Draconic Flames can now be aimed, instead of being fired at a random target, making it considerably stronger than before;
- The Chaoswalker’s altars now have a much smaller and smoother collision profile, and should not get in the way as much as before;
- The Chaoswalker now gains Chaos Energy twice as fast;
General changes and fixes:
- Added new options in the Fight panel to allow you to disable individual pieces of your meta progression, so you can customize how you play;
- Changed the Engineer individual skill tree node from granting Mineral drop bonuses to granting Attack Speed (making it so engineer no longer have a slight increase in material gains compared to other characters);
- Fixed an issue where Dazed was not having any effect on enemies, should now work as intended;
- Fixed an issue where Distracted and Debilitated were not being calculated properly, making them more effective than they should be especially in endless and overlord runs;
- Fixed an issue where you would get more Artifact Power than intended with every Endless or Overlord map;
- Fixed an issue where multiple instances of a certain Synergy power up would count as multiple sources of a debuff, for example, picking Hypothermia twice would count as two sources of Disarray, when it should only count as one;
- Fixed an issue where the “More Details” key bind would not work as intended. Requires a new key bind to be set to fix the issue if you had this problem;
- Fixed an issue where skill tree nodes that boosted your ascension could fail to load (not common but could happen);
- Implemented visual improvements for a few skills that would very early entirely hide red damage areas, such as Blizzard and Ice Vortex;
- Fixed an issue with a Myrmidon’s skill tree node granting much more critical chance than it should;
- Fixed the damage areas of a few basic and elite enemies that were unable to cause damage;
- Fixed an issue where Electrified could be consumed without properly releasing its burst of energy;
- Fixed an issue where the Hound Master dogs would not properly receive stats from the skill tree;
- Fixed an issue where certain effects would remain in the scene indefinitely;
- Changed the name of the underlying skills related to Icy Veins, Purity, Electrified and Radiance to reflect the name of the buff, so it is easier to understand;
- Minor fixes all across the game;
- Added the Cunning trait to the following Summon skills:
- Death Knight’s Ebon Knights
- Beastmaster’s Exotic Beasts
- Beastmaster’s Wolves (Skill Tree)
- Monkey King’s Black Clones
- Myrmidon’s Loyal Servants
- Hound Master’s Dogs
- Chaos Totem
- Cobra Totem
- EZ Mechanical Spider
- EZ Sentry
- Fiery Blades
- Frost Totem
- Summon Assassin Enclave
- Summon Ballista
- Summon Helper Elves
- Summon Infantry
- Summon Putrid Hounds
- Summon Skeletal Archers
- Summon Skeletal Warrior
- Summon Spider Queen
- Summon War Tiger
We hope you will enjoy all the new content added with this update and do let us know in the comments below what you think!
If you'd like to keep up to date with major updates and other big announcements from us, we also want to invite you to sign up to our new mailing list!
Thank you all very much for your support and we hope to see you in the next one, there is a lot of cool stuff still in the oven!
Have a great day!
~Soulstone Team