Two months of work since the last demo build. Most of it went into the save system, plus a round of performance work aimed at the later-game waves, preparing for release, and a handful of real balance changes.
Your existing demo saves carry over.
The beta is open
The closed beta is live as of today, August 11, and runs through August 25. It covers the Prologue through Chapter 2 and is distributed through Steam Playtest. Chapters 3 and 4 are being built separately and aren't part of it.
The first wave of invites has gone out to creators, press, and newsletter subscribers, and there's still room. I'll be sending more batches before the window closes. If you want in, join the newsletter at dawninglight.gg/newsletter and you'll be in the pool for the next one.
Balance
- Aero Blast hits dramatically harder. Its damage was well below where it needed to be, so rank I now deals 60 damage, up from 15.
- Hidden Spears' knockback doubled. Spears now actually shove things once fortitude is broken.
- Hidden Spears' sixth Base Damage upgrade now requires a higher trap grade. It was purchasable out of order, skipping ahead of the ranks meant to come before it.
Saves
- Older saves load and upgrade automatically, so your demo progress carries forward.
- Automatic rotating backups. If your save is damaged, the game falls back to the newest healthy backup instead of failing.
- Fixed the game hanging on the Load screen when a save file had been cut short mid-write.
- Damaged saves now tell you what was lost and load the rest, instead of erroring out or, worse, breaking later mid-run.
Bug fixes
- Fixed enemies getting permanently stuck on the field at 0 HP. An Arrow Rain bolt hitting an enemy that was already dying could break every despawn that followed for the rest of the session.
- Fixed gold being spent without the tile being placed. This traced back to a startup crash on unusual window sizes, which also stopped the analytics consent prompt from ever appearing.
- Fixed a trap cooldown icon staying stuck on screen when the Guild Master's Trap Blast landed after you'd already lost the stage.
- Fixed aura effects lingering on the field forever after their owner died or the ability was recast.
- Camera fixes. Pan, rotate and zoom no longer stick when a gesture gets interrupted, and camera collision against terrain and buildings has been reworked.
- Damage numbers now scale against your own output. Popup size didn't vary with hit size and ballooned as you zoomed in. A big hit now reads as a big hit whether you're in the prologue or chapter 4.
- Holding Alt to preview a mastery node's maxed values now keeps working as you move between nodes.
Performance
Aimed at the Chapter 4 stages, where the enemy count climbs well beyond one-hundred.
- Enemy ragdolls rebuilt on a lighter rig, and their physics now only recalculates when something has actually changed.
- Damage-number popups are pooled and pre-warmed. Crit numbers weren't pooled at all, and the rest grew mid-fight, a measurable source of hitching during big waves.
Audio
- New Kaelviir dialogue in Embervale. Fresh welcome, trap-building and respawn lines.
Thanks for playing. Bug reports and save files are extremely welcome!
Regards,
Kalradia