Greetings Aces!
As twilight settles in, our first major update—Duskveil—ushers in a haunting autumnal transformation to the Belfry. During this mysterious time, the Ebb seeps into our world, conjuring a chillingly delightful atmosphere … making the Belfry feel more alive (or perhaps...undead?).
This update marks not just a seasonal shift—with loads of spooky new gear—but also a fresh wave of enhancements to enrich your adventure. One month into Early Access and your feedback as Founders has been to-die-for! As we keep fine-tuning the experience, we’re thrilled to deliver on our promise of regular content – while ensuring our tweaks are constantly being informed by your input.
For our most dedicated Aces looking for more mission content, we’re excited to introduce new replayable Discovery Missions! These randomized missions, one in each biome – Grasslands, Fungi Forest, Mountains, and Ruins – offer an opportunity to play discovery missions until new danger levels are unlocked (note: they won’t unlock areas or award Writs).
All told, this update brings exploration updates, class enhancements, balancing tweaks, plenty of quality-of-life improvements, and more. And importantly, after perusing all the game updates below, check out our list of new gear, including this month’s bonus items! There’s more on the horizon, but for now, step into the twilight of Duskveil...
Duskveil, Unveiled
This update is packed with exciting improvements designed to enhance your experience. From smoother progression to class refinements, we’ve made sure the journey feels more balanced and rewarding.
Gameplay & Exploration
This update focuses on refining core systems like item progression, Spirit Dust, and shrine functionality, while also keeping missions and challenges fun and balanced. One of our key goals was to smooth out the progression and difficulty curves. We heard your feedback that leveling up, gearing up, and collecting Spirit Dust was happening a bit too fast. We also noticed some sharp difficulty spikes between Danger Levels, especially between Levels 3 and 4 – where Aces don't yet have access to Epic Items. To address this, we’ve adjusted item upgrades so fully upgraded Uncommon and Rare items can now reach higher levels, while keeping the balance intact for Epic items.
Exploration & Mission Adjustments
- New Replayable Discovery Missions: Explore new replayable discovery missions in Grasslands, Fungi Forest, Mountains, and Ruins. While these missions won’t award Writs or unlock new areas, they offer variety and a fresh challenge until new content arrives.
- Venture Quests: Increased the number of Aspects awarded for completing Venture Quests. You’ll now receive more rewards for quests accepted post-patch.
- Aspect Storage: Expanded the Aspect storage limit from 40 to 50 slots, giving you more room to collect and manage your Aspects.
- Healing Shrines: Now cleanse detrimental status effects, giving you a reliable way to recover during tough encounters.
- Explosive Barrels: Slightly reduced the size of the explosion radius so that it better matches the visual effects.
- Sten Umbra Shrine Puzzle: The puzzle now resets immediately after mistakes, allowing for faster retries.
- Destroy Rat Hoard Challenge (Rakentague): Adjusted prop placement to prevent them from being hidden behind foreground elements.
- Haljaran Encounter: Made adjustments to the final encounter and fixed a bug where players could leave the cave interior.
- Updated dialogue lines for quests in Danger Levels 1 and 2 for improved clarity and flow.
- Updated text for the "Kill enemies with fire" challenges to make instructions clearer.
- Adjusted hazards and walk planes in ruins so that hazards are easier to see and less obstructed.
- Job Quests that require discovery missions for objective completion have been changed to allow any mission within the specified biome.
Balancing & Bug Fixes
- Reduced the amount of experience gained from enemy kills by ~22%.
- Slightly reduced the initial item level for Rare and Epic rarity items.
- Increased the number of levels granted from upgrading an item at the Forge from 2 to 4 per upgrade.
- Reduced the number of times Epic items can be upgraded from 3 to 2.
- Moderately increased the amount of Spirit Dust required for item upgrades.
- Dismantling higher rarity items now grants more Spirit Dust than dismantling lower rarity items.
- Reduced the rate at which Spirit Dust drops from barrels and other breakable props.
- Increased the amount of Spirit Dust granted as a reward for completing Danger License Trials.
- Venture end-of-mission chests are no longer guaranteed to drop multiple max-rarity items.
- Added a cooldown for the burn/bleed/poison per-hit perks to address balance issues between classes with different attack speeds.
- Fixed a bug where the DEF stat was providing players with slightly less damage mitigation than intended at higher Danger Levels.
- Fixed several instances where Lieutenants (mini-bosses) were appearing in missions where they shouldn’t have been.
- Fixed hazards and walk planes in ruins making hazards easier to see and no longer obscured by the environment.
- Renamed Oasin Daggers to Dancer's Daggers as it was a duplicate name for another pair of daggers.
Combat & Classes
It’s been great reading all the feedback about each class. The Sentinel Class in particular has had a lot of healthy discussion, both positive and critical. It’s clear that this Class is a hot topic, and there are aspects of it that don't quite feel right. A large portion of this update specifically focuses on the Sentinel’s Class Mechanic to bring it more in line with the other classes. Some of these changes may be expected, but it’s possible that there’s a bit of a fun surprise as well. There will be additional tweaks in the future to further refine the Class Mechanic, but right now, we wanted to focus on providing the player with cool moments and new opportunities. Thanks for joining us on this adventure!
Hit Impacts
- We fixed several issues where hit impacts weren’t showing up properly when enemies blocked, ensuring more accurate feedback during fights.
Sentinel
- Block: It is now possible to cancel attacks into block. This follows the same rules as canceling into an Evade.
- Shield Strike: It is now possible to double-tap Block to perform a Shield Strike. Shield Strike can Block Break blocking enemies, stagger fodder enemies, and has a small window to Parry incoming attacks. Shield Strike provides the player with another way to perform the Shield Bash combo. Press Heavy Attack after the Shield Strike and see how it goes!
- Parry: Increased Parry window to better account for online latency and decreased Parry cooldown window. This will make it easier to create some “Let’s go Justin!” moments when Parrying multi-hit attacks.
- Valor: Increased Valor reward when blocking and parrying attacks, and increased the number of hits available while in Valor mode.
Pyroclast
- Allowing players to change their facing direction during the Wildfire Focus Skill. This is only possible to do on very specific frames before the final explosion but should allow players to do a quick flip if there’s an enemy behind you. Thanks for the suggestion @Saints!
Rockbreaker
- Fixed an issue where the Hold Heavy Attack was missing a dodge cancel on hit.
Shadowstriker
- Increased the hitstun caused by Sunrise Shrapnel so that enemies can’t walk away from the explosion.
Umbra
- Iska: Fixed an issue where Iska’s projectile would explode prematurely without causing damage.
- Sten: Visual effects after Sten’s ability now appear properly, ensuring his exit is as impactful as his arrival.
Enemies
For this update, we wanted to smooth out some rough edges with specific enemies or mechanics. The Enrage mechanic in particular had some unintended issues that needed to be resolved. The Merk Marauder and Yxil were also normalized a bit to provide a better gameplay experience. Please keep the feedback coming!
Enrage
- Getting hit by the Enrage activation burst no longer causes Vulnerability. This couldn’t be fixed until now, sorry!
- Timing of Enrage bursts are more unified for better consistency across enemies.
- Fixed an issue where the wrong audio cue was being played when certain enemies activated Enrage.
- Fixed an issue where Enraged enemies had a larger defense bonus than expected. Enraged enemies now have a 20% damage reduction.
All Enemies
- Fixed an issue that caused some LTs and Bosses to do an attack immediately when their Break Bar was depleted.
- This was very noticeable with Yxil specifically.
Pangor
- Made it possible to more reliably parry the Leap Slam attack.
Madpole Bouncer
- Fixed an issue where the wrong character portrait was being displayed.
Merk Marauder
- After watching this character wreak havoc, it was pretty obvious that this fight had some problems. The Marauder’s Charge Attack in particular was happening way too frequently. This caused fights to slow down way more than intended. The frequency of this attack has been adjusted.
- Adjusted recovery frames on key attacks so that players have more opportunities to retaliate with their own attacks.
- Axe Slam attack no longer summons additional enemy allies.
Flickertail
- Fixed an issue that caused the Flashbang attack to detonate early if an Ace is nearby.
Yxil
- In general, this enemy had some obvious pain points that needed to be addressed. The primary focus was on Yxil’s recovery time, which was way too short. Players should be rewarded for successfully baiting or dodging Yxil’s attacks. The changes we made should feel more in line with expectations.
- Fixed an issue where the Leaping Overhead Slam’s projectiles could hit players multiple times. This no longer pierces through the Ace and now explodes on impact.
- Reduced the tracking of Yxil’s homing projectile so that it’s easier to dodge.
- Decreased the hitbox size of Yxil’s projectile to better reflect the size of the visual effect.
Art
In this update, we’ve refined visual elements throughout the game, cleaned up pesky visual bugs, and made sure everything looks as crisp as possible. From fixing lighting and texture issues to making sure your gear looks flawless.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed lighting for shoulder, waist, weapon, and Umbra items in Loadout scenes.
- Fixed black chunks from destructible tree stumps.
- Bees no longer abruptly disappear when their effect ends.
- Fixed visual issues with Sit and Bellower Scream emotes.
- Fixed a line appearing on Iska’s tail.
- Fixed neck seam gaps in several chest pieces.
- Updated the enemy icon for the Madpole Bouncer.
- Fixed hair clipping issues with various helmets.
- Fixed an issue with Papyrus' eyes clipping.
- Fixed clipping issues with the Steamsilk Belt.
- Fixed visual inconsistency with desert sandals and body types.
- Fixed snow streaks on the lake in the Haljaran venture.
- Fixed grass clipping through rocks in the Hollowgrass Steppes mission.
- Fixed texture seam issues with rocky cliffs in the Grasslands biome.
Updates
- Removed capes from Merk Bo Staff Scrub Enemies.
- Truffleclub puddles now randomize correctly.
- Adjusted cloth physics when facing left or right in the Tower.
- Updated the woolen mantle icon for better clarity.
UI/UX
This update brings UI and user experience improvements to make every Ace’s journey smoother. Whether it’s organizing the Forge or fine-tuning how information is displayed, we’re focused on making everything feel more intuitive and responsive (less time getting through gear sorting, more time gobo slayin’).
Bug Fixes
- Fixed text scaling issues in conversations.
- Fixed audio when changing sections and tabs in the settings panel.
- Fixed controller panel showing incorrect prompts.
- Fixed network health details overlapping at large text settings.
- Fixed scroll bar oddities when navigating between tabs.
- Fixed banners showing anomalies when not intended.
Updates
- Improved mission banners and objectives display.
- Separated items in the Forge into weapons and gear.
- Improved Danger License Trial screen layouts.
- Improved voice audio handling in the Facewright.
- Updated the main menu design.
- Added support for welcome popups.
- Improved store design and inventory design.
- Improved design and prompt wording on the Expressions screen.
Gobo-ween Goodies
Duskveil brings with it a trove of spooky-season-themed treats to deck out your Aces and Umbra. From eerie outfits to hauntingly stylish weapon skins, you’ll be ready to roam the BOO-lfry in style. And don’t forget, Founders: our new update kicks off a new Monthly Bonus just for you, so claim your bonus items today!
Monthly Bonus
- Silver Founders: Jack-o-Lantern Sticker and Curio Core Battle Pass Key
- Gold Founders: Goj-Eye Umbra Skin
Full Gear Sets
- Ebon Warden Cosmetic Set
- Nightcloak Outrider Cosmetic Set
Weapon Skins
- Ebon Warden Warclub
- Nightcloak Stilettos
Helms
- Iron Pox Helm
- Gourd Guardian
- Haunted Harlequin Helm
- McKrakenstein Helm
- Scarecrow Sten Helm
Emotes
- Sneak Fail
- Trick or Treat!
- Dramatic Phantom
Stickers
- Ebon Warden
- Screeching Cat
- Nightcloak
- Defeat
Umbra Skins
- Spectre Sten
- McKrakenstein