Hi Tanks!
The first major update of Early Access is officially out.
I wanted to take this chance and thank all those who playtested it, provided feedback throughout Early Access and shaped the contents of this update, I tried making this update as community-focused as possible.
Waiting for you in the Discord or in the Steam forum!
Patch Notes:
New Threat System
New threat system. A threat table now drives enemy target selection. Damage, heals and taunts all generate threat, the old health threshold system has been replaced entirely
Companions also generate threat by dealing damage and healing
Threat Meter HUD showing your standing against your current target as well as other party members threat
Threat decays over time, enemies left unchecked will prefer companions as targets
Party Size & Companion Changes
Party size increased to 3
Companions now take a role of Primary and Secondary
Primary Companion: Holds both passive and active abilities
Secondary Companion: Holds only passive abilities
Companions now weave in auto attacks alongside their abilities
Companions may actively disengage from high threat targets
Companions will always auto attack an already engaged enemy (for now)
Ranger teleport revamped. Teleport now triggers when the ranger gets hit and brings the ranger to safety with a short cooldown
Ranger passive revamped, now fires Heartseekers on enemies the player holds on them for 10 seconds, repeating every 10 seconds
At level 10, the companion upgrades are rolled between all living companions
Healer now auto casts Holy Ground if the player is below 25% HP
Compliments voicelines added and will trigger when companions don't take damage for some time during combat
Acknowledgement voicelines added when marking an enemy
New Companion: Summoner
The summoner raises an army of skeletons that follows you
Passive ability: summon a minion every 3 seconds, up to 5 minions
Active ability: Sacrifice a minion, healing the player for 60 health
Minion damage is attributed to the Summoner’s threat
Summoner is unlocked at level 4
New System: Marking Targets
You are now able to mark enemies to be focused by your party
Default keybinds: Left mouse button on keyboard, South Button (A) on controller
Summoner minions will also prioritize hitting the marked target
Marked enemies take 50% increased damage in Dungeon Crawl
New System: Pull Counter
A counter now appears on the screen and provides bonus the more enemies are targeting you in combat
Tier 1: “Tanking” requires 5 enemies targeting you (Wave Defense) or 4 (Dungeon Crawl) and provides a 5% bonus to EXP
Tier 2: “Chain Pulling” requires 10 enemies targeting you (Wave Defense) or 8 (Dungeon Crawl) and provides a 12% bonus to EXP
Tier 3: “Aggro Lord” requires 15 enemies targeting you (Wave Defense) or 12 (Dungeon Crawl) and provides a 20% bonus to EXP
This system is not active in Boss Rush mode
Buffs and Debuffs
Introduced new buffs and debuffs applicable to yourself and to enemies
Slow: Reduces enemy speed
Bleed: Deals damage over time, stackable
Invulnerable: Block all incoming attacks for 100% of the damage
Absorb: prevents damage taken
Root: prevents movement
Abilities & Upgrades
Maximum Toughness is now 4 stacks (up from 3)
New ability: Blood Strike. Deals 40 damage to your target and heals you for the amount. Costs 1 Toughness, 4 second cooldown
New ability: Hold The Line. Taunt all enemies around you and become Invulnerable for 10 seconds. Costs 3 Toughness. Cooldown: 30 seconds. Moving or using abilities cancel the effect.
New ability: Holy Light. Heal yourself for 30 and damage your target for 10. 4 second cooldown, gain 1 toughness
New ability: Brace. Enter defensive stance blocking frontal attacks, blocked attacks causes companions to retalliate dealing instant damage to the enemy blocked
Ground Slam revamped to work at any range, but damage and knockdown duration scales with distance
Retribution now has a 1-second internal cooldown so it can't be spammed by rapid blocks.
Blood Strike upgrade: Increases damage and healing based on the target’s missing health
Blood Strike upgrade: Finishing an enemy with Blood Strike taunts all enemies around it
Blood Strike upgrade: Blood Strike applies Bleed stacking up to 3 times
Hold The Line upgrade: Companions inside Hold The Line gain +100% damage and healing
Hold The Line upgrade: Companions inside Hold The Line are healed for 5 per second
Hold The Line upgrade: Spending Toughness reduces the cooldown of Hold The Line by 1sec per stack
Hold The Line upgrade: Can be used while moving but no longer taunts
Shield Throw upgrade: Shield Throw applies 70% Slow for 10 seconds
Whirlwind upgrade: Whirlwind applies 70% Slow for 10 seconds
Absorb upgrade: overheal create an absorb shield for 50% of the overheal done, up to 50% of max HP
New Heartseeker upgrade: Upon inflicting slow fire an instant heartseeker with 30% efficiency
New Holy Ground upgrade: rooted enemies in Holy Ground take +100% damage from it
Tutorial
Removed the old Tutorial
A new tutorial covering the basics of the game was added for Dungeon Crawl
Tutorial now teaches interrupts, tabbing, marking and an introduction to threat
Added Companion death explanation on first ally death.
Added a step in the academy tutorial that introduces the Spellbook at the Altar
Changed the training grounds tutorial tooltip
Dungeons & Modifiers
New Modifier: Marked for Death - Marked targets take 50% increased damage
New Modifier: Puddles - Enemies drop puddles on death that heal nearby enemies
Aggro immunity modifier removed from Wave Defense and Dungeon Crawl.
Minibosses and bosses are no longer immune to taunt
Boss Rush now unlocks at level 10 (up from 2)
Boss Rush 101 now spawn 8 adds (down from 20)
Boss Rush - Boss health increased
Increased EXP gained from completing Wave Defense and Dungeon Crawl
Reduced EXP gained from completing Boss Rush.
UI/UX
Added a “Retry” button when dying in a run
Added a “Give Up” button for forfeiting a run
New companion party screen with hover previews and per-role scaling (primary and secondary roles)
New Shield Select menu
New Portal screen for starting runs
Added Off-screen companion direction indicators with damage-flash pulse.
Companion damage flash screen effect, toggleable in settings.
Healer channels a beam during Holy Ground, to explain her casting ability.
Healer recolored white.
Talent refund. Right-click / Y refunds a single point, replacing the old full reset button.
Menus with tabs are now navigable with LB/RB on controller
New waypoints in the academy now point to freshly unlocked features
New window for unlocking content when completing runs
Best score and ranking are now shown in the portal screen, per mode, with grayed-out medals for tiers you haven't earned.
New loading screen
New pause menu
New settings menu
New talent menu
New Achievements menu
Moved the Spellbook from the main menu to the altar
New medal UI
Added HUD Scaling option in Display settings
Added feature tooltips to better explain abilities and upgrades and improved their placements
Added animations for gaining and spending Toughness
New input glyph and callout UI
New graphic settings: brightness, contrast, bloom
Added VSync toggle in the display menu
Changed the default keybinds for Mobility and Utility abilities to better support hold-to-aim
Changed the default controller keybind for Cycle Targets
By default all nameplates will be visible, toggleable in the settings menu
Added icons to enemy casts
Added overhead player health display when lower than 65% health
Improvements to the tab targeting algorithm
Tab targeting (“Cycle Targets”) now also targets enemies with aggro
Added a "control prompt" screen to introduce manual camera for those interested
Shields
New shield: Martyr. Each available Toughness stack grants +20% damage. Abilities no longer generate Toughness, instead, gain 1 Toughness for every 40 damage taken. Starting ability: Protect
New shield: Shredder. Each available Toughness stack increases dodge chance by 10%. Dodging an attack increases Attack Speed by 20% for 8 seconds stacking up to 4 times. Starting ability: Charge
New shield: Absolver. Each available toughness stack grants +10% healing bonus. Auto attacks heal for 30% of the damage. Healing causes AoE damage for a portion of the heal. Starting ability: Holy Light
Crusader now grants 15% damage reduction per stack down from 20% to compensate for the increase of total Toughness stacks available
Disc toughness modifier changed: Each available Toughness stack grants 2 Block value
Vice Grip toughness modifier changed: Each available Toughness stack grants 15% Movement Speed
Enemies and Bosses
New enemy telegraph HUD. Tracked abilities surface as timed bars, most urgent cast promoted to center under 3 seconds, with a sound warning when it fires.
Boss nameplates now show status effects.
Bosses in Boss Rush now show a timer when Adds are about to spawn
Added Enemy patrols and linked packs. Enemies patrol aggro as a group when pulled.
Non-engaged enemies no longer cast abilities.
Melee Goblin enemies give more XP and have slightly more HP.
Ranged enemies health increased
Spawn layouts revamped across several maps.
New enemy ability: Call for Help - some enemies might run away and call their friends
New enemy ability: ranged enemies will now perform a frontal charge attack
New enemy ability: Enrage - some enemies cast enrage increasing damage of nearby enemies, stacking.
Enemies scale in size while targeting companions
Music and Audio
Added sound priority systems for companion voice lines and critical sound effects
City ambience layers added.
Music added in Boss Rush, Dungeon Crawl and Wave Defense
Music layers change dynamically to combat state and react to companions in danger
Added sounds for boss abilities
New sound for Ground Slam
Bug Fixes
Fixed all enemies snapping to the player the moment companions died.
Fixed a bug where Pull required an active target
Fixed a bug where the boss’ Cleave would hit the player even outside of the impact area
Fixed a bug where you could lose mouse input if leveled up while aiming
Fixed a bug where some enemies were untargetable during knockdowns
Fixed several walls where companions could walk through
Fixed a bug where levels failed to complete if Steam wasn’t running
Fixed an audio bug where companion voice lines could overlap
Performance
Improved performance and memory costs
Added shader pre-compilation to avoid stuttering especially on AMD GPUs
Implemented object pooling to combat text to increase performance