Hi folks,
Our latest major patch is now live for everyone, and it further improves our sandbox experience, offering new ways to play and challenges to overcome.
- Massive World Expansion: 3 new landmasses (Theminster, Shekhmaet, Frostvale) and all ocean regions are now fully explorable. The update adds new towns, NPCs, traverseable biomes like Infernal and Arctic, and dynamic naval combat. With this new map expansion, you can travel and explore the entire world map.
- Dynamic Overworld & Lairs: New hostile groups can now spawn directly on the world map to roam and chase you. Lairs have been completely overhauled with over 40 new fully moddable, faction specific encounters. Furthermore they are data-driven and modders now can add their own lairs, or overworld enemy groups.
- Expanded End Game: Encounter levels can now scale up to Level 50 in the newly added high level regions.
- New Species & Abilities: Introduced the Amorphos shifter species, along with new upgradable elemental and plant summons. Mimesis will increase along with your level, and later on you can eventually learn to mimic elementals and undead.
- QoL & Balance Improvements: The influence required to join factions has been halved, and there are new sandbox starting options are available. You can for example start at a higher level (5,10 or 15) at a different region, and/or as fresh recruit of a faction.
Your save files will continue to work, and you will be able to complete your games in progress. However, once you are finished with your current game, well, you know what to do ;)
As with all major content drops, I did my best to test everything, but I am just one person. You may still encounter issues or imbalanced gameplay. If so, please let me know, and I will address those problems as soon as possible. I know many who easily spent a few hundred hours in the sandbox before this update, so here is raising a glass to a few hundred hours more. Have fun!
You can read more details in the patch notes below:
25/05/26 # 1.2.60
New Content
World Expansion & Exploration
- New Landmasses & Towns: Theminster (east), Shekhmaet (southeast), and Frostvale (north) are now fully implemented and explorable.
- Town Infrastructure: These new locations feature functional inns, markets, random NPCs, and allow you to track your faction influence and accept contracts.
- New Oceans & Sailing: The entire body of water on the map is now fully traversable. Unblocked hidden map sea routes and implemented the following ocean regions: Sea of Mists, Sea of Sorrows, Inner Sea, Sea of Wonders, and Frozen Reaches.
- New Environment Tiles: Added Crater, Infernal, Arctic, and Tundra tiles. These come with their own specific Camp maps, Encounter maps, and discoveries. Infernal tiles are fully traversable.
- New Harbors: Added several new harbors where you can make landfall or manually sail from.
- Sandbox Starts: Added new options to start the sandbox aligned with a specific faction, at a higher starting level, or in different towns.
Items, Harvesting & Resources
- Equipment: Added 21 new armors and a couple of new tools.
- Harvest Action additions: You can now harvest specific resources in targeted biomes using your harvest action in the Overworld map: Starforged Ore (Crater), Terracite (Hills, Crater, Cave), Wyrdflint (Desert, Infernal, Ruin), Dewstone (Arctic, Water, Cave), and Zephyrite (Arctic, Highlands, Hills).
- New Harvesting Nodes: Added 37 new harvestable nodes across the various camp and battle maps. Unlike harvesting in the overworld, where you try to find a resource and your party skills and items help you succeed, these nodes are right there in the camp or post-combat maps, and you can just grab the resources assuming you have the right tools.
Encounters & Simulation
- High-Level Content: Completed the infrastructure for higher-level encounters (e.g., level 50 Brinewalkers in Frozen Reaches or level 36 Greater Corsairs in the Sea of Mists). Epic level gear drops are not yet included.
- Dynamic Overworld Spawns: Hostile groups can now spawn directly onto the overworld map. They roam, chase neutrals (or the player), and dynamically affect the world map simulation.
- Naval Combat: Certain hostile groups (Avian, Aquatic, and Corsair enemies) can spawn in ocean tiles, chase you, and attack while you are sailing.
- New Species & Effects: Introduced Amorphos (a new species of shifters) and Mimicry (a unique ability used by Amorphoi called Mimesis, allowing the caster to shapeshift into a target actor if the target's level is less than or equal to the mimicry magnitude plus the caster's level).
- Codex Updates: Added dedicated lore entries for Demon, Cambion, Angel, and Nephilim species.
- New NPCs: Added 19 new merchants and 6 new companions distributed across Theminster, Shekhmaet, and Frostvale.
Summons & Abilities
- Occult & Rituals: Greater variants added for Summon Elemental actions. The Greater Fire or Earth elemental can be upgraded to a Magma Elemental. The Greater Air or Ice elemental can be upgraded to a Storm Elemental.
- Herbalism: Added Carnivora Lumina (upgrades to Carnivora Solis) and Carnivora Paludis (upgrades to Carnivora Venenosa).
- Subterfuge: Added the Small Spider, which can be upgraded to Large and Giant variants.
Definitive Lair List & Faction Contracts
Lairs have been completely reorganized and expanded. Faction-exclusive lair contracts will now appear if you meet the minimum influence requirements (the contractor is always a faction member).
- Contractor Faction: Rat (1 to 3), Bandit (2 to 6), Spider (3 to 5), Wild Boar (3 to 6), Snake (4 to 7), Lizardfolk (4 to 7), Cave Spider (5 to 8), Dire Wolf (6 to 10), Highwaymen (7 to 12), Viper (7 to 14), Lizardfolk Chief (7 to 14), Vulture (8 to 15), Dire Bear (9 to 15), Elemental (9 to 16), Wyvern (14 to 22), Desert Raiders (14 to 22), Greater Elemental (16+), Ancient Wyvern (22+), Desert Warband (22+)
- Blood Coven: Dawn Warden (6 to 11), Blood Breaker (8 to 14), Order Bloodhunter (12 to 18), Aurum Agent (13+), Blood Violator (16+), Elite Bloodhunter (18+)
- Order of Light: Undead (4 to 8), Blood Hierophant (8 to 14), Fallen Knight (12 to 18), Coven Castellan (13+), Master Necromancer (16+), Sanguine Matriarch (18+)
- Ember Dawn: Vampire (4 to 8), Feral Ghouls (5 to 11), Blood Savant (12 to 18), Blood Exarch (13+), Cultist (16+), Crypt Haunting (18+)
- Via Aurum: Racketeers (4 to 8), Pirate (6 to 11), Warden Veteran (12 to 18), Siren (13+), Brinewalkers (16+), Wererat Syndicate (18+)
- Underworld: Zealous Warden (4 to 8), Independent Troublemaker (6 to 11), Aurum Mercenary (7 to 13), Order Inquisition (13+), Wererat Gang (16+), Vampire Coven (18+)
- Resurgent Tenebris: Inquisition Purifier (7 to 16), Rival Necromancer (13+), Dawn Garrison (16+), Inquisition Fort (18+)
- Dauntless Pioneers: Carnivora (4 to 8), Ruin Ghouls (7 to 13), Corsair (7 to 16), Harpy (13+), High Corsair (16+), Needlescale Pack (18+)
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an issue where neutral units could remain idle after reaching a harbor tile.
- Fixed a bug in Plant Physiology causing combat and rendering issues with the newly added plant enemies.
- Corrected the inflated prices for the newest upgradable summons.
- Added map generation safeguards to ensure contractor and adversary tiles of certain contract types strictly spawn inside town borders.
Misc & QoL
Game Balance & Progression
- Reduced the required influence to formally join a faction from 30 down to 15.
- Non-exclusive lair types now correctly reward you with positive influence for their contractor's faction.
- Boars have been nerfed so they feel more like actual boars and less like wyverns in disguise.
- Tweaked the base balance of various enemies to fit the new level scaling.
- Moved some of Doven's region tiles to Aronthag's Descent to smooth out sudden difficulty spikes in that area.
- Forcefully overfeeding a companion in town will no longer instantly murder them. However, they may turn into a vamp or heavily resent you for it.
Map & UI Improvements
- Added map pins for the four arenas and relocated the Doven arena to coordinates (14,48).
- Added faction icons to exclusive contracts for easier visual identification.
- Improved the underlying algorithm for generating lair contracts to provide better variety.
- Updated the Fast Travel and "Ask Information" menus to accommodate the new inns and markets.
- You can now book direct passage (fast travel) between the Valetport port and Theminster.
- Edited various scenes, option texts, and location lore descriptions to improve overall narrative flow.
- Augustin will now automatically join your active party before his quest concludes if he was placed in the reserves.
Modding
- Lairs are now completely data-driven and fully moddable. Definitions can be found in Lairs/LairsDB.json. Creating a lair requires setting up the encounter in the Bands Editor and adding the respective entry to LairsDB.
- Overworld spawn modifiers have been added to LairDB. You can set SpawnInOverworld (boolean), SpawnInOverworldExtraReqs (string for specific triggers like vampire status or faction hostility), and ParleyBehavior (string).
- Added specific leader tags for overworld spawning: "Aggressive" leaders bypass parley entirely, "Avian" leaders can fly over allowed terrain and oceans but avoid hostile towns, and "Aquatic/Corsair" leaders are restricted exclusively to water tiles.
- Added the parameter "forbidResearch": true to RecipesDB.json allowing modders to block specific recipes from being researched in camps.
- Important Modder Note: If you're use a modified public room, you will need to manually add the new companions to it (Aella, Gudrun, Hiroshi, Tormund, Khalishar, and Zainab).
Region Level Breakdown (Normal Difficulty / Sisyphus Off)
- Llanford: 1 to 5
- Emerald Basin: 2 to 4
- Merchant's Road: 2 to 4
- Aronthag's Descent: 4 to 6
- Glenwood: 4 to 6
- Heygrove: 4 to 7
- Keywick: 4 to 7
- Oxgate: 5 to 8
- Taymoor Marsh: 5 to 8
- Ponthill: 6 to 9
- Valetport: 8 to 12
- Ashwick: 10 to 13
- Sea of Sorrows: 10 to 16
- Bedale: 11 to 15
- Borderlands: 12 to 16
- Denham: 12 to 16
- Lacris: 13 to 15
- Ironvein Hold: 14 to 18
- Theminster: 14 to 20
- Witherfen Bog: 16 to 18
- Inner Sea: 16 to 22
- Doven: 18 to 24
- Hamor: 20 to 26
- Sea of Wonders: 22 to 32
- The Wastelands: 24 to 30
- Sea of Mists: 24 to 36
- Shekhmaet: 30 to 42
- Frostvale: 32 to 45
- Frozen Reaches: 38 to 48
- Shimmercrag: 40 to 50