Hello once again!
In the last post we mentioned that the beta for chapter 3 would be ongoing internally and we discussed some of the release dates.
I'm happy to report that the beta over the past 3 months has looked quite promising and that we are ready to move ahead to the release of this new chapter! While there is still work to be done, everything is stable enough to the point where we can grab more feedback as more players start to get their hands on it.
Once again, for those only interested in timelines:
Chapter 3 will release on June 23rd, 2025!
For those interested in reading some of the changes since the last blog, let's go over the implementation overview!
Multiplayer
Party system
Adding onto the multiplayer experience, it is now possible to form parties up to 3 players to be able to see each other in combat areas. This change came after it became too strong to have more than 3 players in a combat room be able to heal you.
Dungeons
In the first iterations I mentioned that multiplayer would be visual only. This later evolved into also being able to heal/buff other players. In the latest version it is possible to form parties and take on dungeons! At this time there is only 1 but the foundation has been laid to make more without too much hassle. Dungeons are content for parties of minimum 2 players that must battle through multiple rooms before reaching the boss.
Dungeons will award the player with dungeon credits which can be spent on various items at the dungeon store! I won't reveal too much, but here is one of the awesome spells you can buy:
Each party member must defeat their local room with enemies that only they can see. You can still buff/heal eachother however. The twist in this case is that the arena will shoot multiplayer abilities at you that are synced up between you and your party members, so you must all deal with the same mechanic.
Once all players are ready with their room, the door to next opens up. You must defeat 4 of these rooms before reaching the boss room! The boss is a fully server-driven multiplayer fight. The boss will switch targets and fire mechanics that affects everyone! Working together to take it down therefore is an absolute must!
Targettable spells
A new type of ability you can do is a target-spell. You can select your party members while you're in combat, which will display a small green arrow above your target. Firing the spell will then apply to your current target. If no target is selected, the spell applies to yourself!
Server events
Every hour, on the hour - a 15 minute event will be sent to all players (online mode only!). These will be events that will make it easier for you to level up your skills, or apply modifiers that make it easier to gather rare resources. More and more events will get added over time!
Player list
No longer would you need to spam global chat to check for other players! Simply hit your escape key and observe the player list in the pause menu! This way you don't have to be paranoid on whether you are alone or not!
Hero Ranks
Hero Ranks have been in the game for a while, and were achievable by reaching Arena Rank 5 in each chapter's arena. However the concept was too limited and has now been expanded. Rather than having a maximum of rank 11, the max rank has been increased to 32 and new icons have been added to make it a bit more crisp. You can now view which Hero Ranks you can still earn by opening the Rank Log. These ranks will now dictate how far you are into the game, leading into the next topic!
Leaderboard
... Leaderboards! And no, not the simplified Steam Leaderboard which can get exploited! This is a custom server that will gather all your player statistics from any of the current live servers. Players will get sorted based on their Hero Rank first, and their actual player level second. It will show the top 100 of players!
You can access this leaderboard while you're online in any city, or from your stats menu in the inventory!
Bosses
Hardcore additions
All the bosses of chapter 2 have had hardcore modes added! For chapter 3 currently only the second boss has a hardcore mode, with the final 3 to be added in the near future. I've decided to not let this delay the new chapter release since they can be simply part of weekly updates. In relation to the hardcore mode drops, a secret recipe can be unlocked through rare drops which will require hardcore boss materials to build!
Combat
Reworked tutorial
To help better introduce new players to the mechanics of the game, the tutorial has been reworked entirely. If you would like to experience it but you already have a savefile, you could temporarily move your save file to another location to give it a shot! Hopefully this will better convey the combat to new players.
Perfect shielding
Parrying an enemy has always felt decently snappy. Unfortunately there was no similar feeling for stopping most enemy ranged attacks. That stops today! Introducing - Perfect Shields! This new mechanic will make it so that players have a small window when hitting their block button that will trigger the perfect shield, causing enemy projectiles to explode and for the player to receive a stamina regeneration boost! Missing your window however will cause the mechanic to enter a cooldown!
The wandering trader
Ever ran out of potions before taking on your new bossfight? That's everyone - probably. When you now clear the room just before the new boss, a wandering trader will now appear that will sell you potions, so you can now die and blame something else other than running out of potions!
The attunement combat chamber
Previously the attunement chamber was meant solely for changing out your abilities. Now you will find that a new portal has opened up to the north of the book. This new room will let you practice blocking/perfect-shielding harmless projectiles, swap out spells, and try out your abilities without any cost/cooldown! Feel free to spam away at the army of astral dummies!
Visual makeovers (frogs + wildlife)
Not much exciting here, but still worth a mention! The visual representation of the frogs and the wildlife have always been underwhelming. Their graphics have been swapped around to be a bit more fitting to the rest of the game. This means that any pets you've had from these monsters will also have been updated!
Third ability slot
A pretty big change is that you will now be able to wear 3 active magic abilities. Rather than giving you two slots upon defeating the nature golem, you will now get one slot per chapter. Since the new chapter introduces a boat load of new spells, this was a welcome change.
Stances
One type of that boatload of new spells, are stance spells. These are spells that can be activated and deactivated as you please. These spells will increase certain stats as long as you have the stamina to fuel it! Having a stance activate burns through stamina rather quickly, so these are great for burst-opportunities. It also gives a decent endgame purpose to still levelling up your stamina in the late-game.
Stat chest reward reworks
Previously, if you capped out the chests you get from clearing a room of monsters, you would receive a chest that simply displayed "CAPPED", meaning you could not get a reward from that chest.
This has now been reworked so that if you've capped out a certain stat, that slot will be replaced with a random reward. This could be any of the following:
Recipes
Seeds
Pet Chance (Low chance, but if you see this option it's a guaranteed random pet!)
Equipment
Gold
Cosmetics
Dragons
Speaking of pets, prepare for a brand new type of pet! Dragon eggs have been added to the MTX store. These eggs will evolve as follows: Egg -> Cracked Egg -> Drake -> Adolescent Dragon -> Dragon -> Ancient Dragon. You must have these pets out in their latest stage to be able to "age" them into the next stage. Founders have had their founder's drake converted into this new type of pet! More dragons will become available (for free of course), with the introduction of chapter 4.
Eyetrails
A new type of cosmetic is also available now - that being eyetrails. These are trails that your character leaves behind while walking!
Skilling
Cap raised to 40
The biggest change to skilling will be the level cap increase. This has now been raised from 30 to 40, adding new content and unlocks to each skill! I won't be going over the details for each skill in this blog however, so you'll learn those as you get through the skilling catalogue!
Collection logs
Some new skills will have collections logs added to them. These are rare trinkets that will drop while training your skill. Finding each trinket will increase your player damage by a flat %, meaning that completing a full log will yield decent bonusses for your characters!
Speed farming
Got tired of spamming seeds to fill up your farming field? Well, now you can hold shift and click on a seed to plant all of them in a large radius around you! It is also now possible to collect all grown plants automatically by talking to farmer Phil near your farming plots!
New Glyphs
A new chapter brings along more glyphs! 6 new glyphs are waiting for you to discover their locations spread over the new continent!
Skilling shops
To offer further purpose to your skilling materials, you will now have certain skilling shops where you can buy outfits/pets/abilities/boosts/... for certain fish/hunting hides/...
Controller
Further support
Further support has been added for controllers. More convenience has been added for the following:
Navigating through NPC dialogue
Picking up loot/equipment
Opening skilling stations
Navigating the settings menu
Automatically opening cursor-mode when opening complex menu's
Moving in a circle smoothly now works great on controllers
Auto-aim
To make combat easier, auto-aim has been added to the settings (on by default for new players).
This will automatically target the following in this order:
Incoming Projectiles
Bosses/Dungeon Bosses
Regular enemies
This will make it so you do not have to aim your melee attacks any longer. You will notice that you get an additional "green aim-circle" while in this mode. This will indicate where your arrows/spells will fire towards. This of course does not work with auto-aim and you must aim these. Can't make it too easy!
Future
Of course controllers will be continued WIP until they are up to standard to mark the game for full controller support!
A final note
So as you can tell, a whole lot of work has been done in the past 6 months and I'm looking forward to getting more global feedback on what's available! Please bare with me as we work throughout the bugs/crashes that will inevitably appear as the content becomes available. We've been testing thoroughly throughout the beta, but of course we can't catch everything. I appreciate your patience while I work to get through any issues that may appear.
As always, please discuss any issues/feedback on our Discord or here on Steam (I do read it periodically)!
Thank you so much for your attention, and hopefully we will see you soon in-game!