Three Skies Ascension - Major Update
For this update, we wanted to focus on something a lot of you have asked about since launch: being able to play Three Skies Ascension without a connection.
That turned out to be a much bigger job than "add an offline toggle", and while we were in there we ended up rebuilding how saves work, adding two new challenge modes, expanding the Fusion Tower, and finishing off the Arena Gauntlet. So this one covers a lot of ground.
New Feature: Offline Play
Three Skies Ascension is now fully playable without a connection.
Every action that used to require a trip to the server now has a local version. Quests, crafting, fusions, the tavern, the barracks, dungeon generation, battles, rewards, all of it runs on your device. This isn't a cut-down version of the game, it's the whole thing.
You can play through the full dungeon progression from the tutorial to boss runs, fight in the Arena, and your quests, achievements and Command Level all track normally.
We've also added a dialog when a login fails that offers to continue offline on your current profile, instead of just leaving you stuck at the title screen.
New Feature: Multiple Profiles
Along with offline play, we've built a proper profile system.
You can create, rename and delete profiles from the title screen, and each one is completely independent with its own heroes, progression and settings. When you create a profile you choose whether it's Online or Offline.
If you already have an account, your profile is now created automatically using your account name, so there's no form to fill out when you come back.
New Feature: Run Modifiers
When you create an offline profile, you can now choose one or both of two challenge modes. These are locked in for the life of that save, so choose carefully!
Your profile will show a badge for whichever modifiers it's using.
Hardcore
Heroes who fall in a dungeon are gone permanently.
Revival items are disabled, and any hero you lose is moved to a Graveyard that you can view from the Barracks. We wanted losing a hero to actually mean something, but we also didn't want the roster you built to just vanish without a trace.
A few notes on how it works:
Arena battles are exempt, a loss there won't cost you anyone
If you lose your entire roster, you'll receive a recovery reward so the run can continue
Auto-repeat stops immediately if a hero is lost
Randomizer
The heroes you run into are shuffled. Enemy encounters and recruitable heroes are pulled from the full roster instead of each area's normal list, so no two runs look the same.
We didn't want this to be pure chaos, though. Draws are weighted by rarity, so commons show up the most and high rarities stay rare. You'll see combinations you'd never see normally without being handed a top tier team in your first hour.
Fusion Tower Expansion
The Fusion Tower gets three new systems in this update, plus something a lot of you have asked for.
Synthesis
Synthesis lets you graft a trait from one hero onto another. The donor is consumed, and the recipient keeps everything it already had plus the new trait.
Which trait transfers depends on the catalyst you use: element, skill, talent or palette. Each hero can hold up to three grafts.
Coalescence
Once a hero has all three graft slots filled, Coalescence seals them permanently and maxes out every IV. The hero locks itself afterward so you can't accidentally lose that investment.
Celestial Fusion
There's now a path to Celestial heroes through fusion. Fuse two heroes of the same character with a Celestial catalyst and you're guaranteed that character's Celestial.
Fusion Log
Your fusion history used to disappear the moment a fusion completed, which we agree was pretty unhelpful.
Now you can browse every fusion you've performed, newest first. We've also added a result preview before you commit, and outcomes you haven't discovered yet show as silhouettes the same way journal entries do.
One detail we're happy with: when the log gets full, it drops repeat recipes before it drops anything you've only made once. Your rare discoveries won't get pushed out by routine fusions.
We've also added a skip to the Fusion Tower tutorial, and fusions now have proper animations.
New Feature: Auto-Repeat Dungeon Runs
Set a dungeon running and walk away.
You can configure a dungeon to re-run automatically until:
A set number of runs is finished
You've collected a target amount of any currency or material
You've captured a target number of heroes
You stop it yourself
Supplies can be restocked between runs if you want. Sessions also stop on their own if a run fails, a hero is lost on Hardcore, your barracks fills up, or you can't afford a restock.
If you pause partway through a run, you'll be asked whether you want to pause just that run or end the session entirely. A paused session picks up again when you re-enable auto.
Session Summary
When a session finishes you'll get a full breakdown: runs completed, gold and experience earned, levels gained, items found, heroes captured and recruited, how long it took, and why it stopped. On Hardcore profiles it also lists any heroes you lost.
Arena Gauntlet
The Arena has been updated and has a different feel to it now.
We've added Gauntlet trials with their own reward tracks, three to start with. Early tiers now pull from a rotating pool of opponents instead of throwing the same fight at you over and over, which was a common complaint.
Trial difficulty is staggered more sensibly, power scaling between tiers is more even, and Arena Coin now shows correctly in the currency bar. The Arena shop has also moved into the Arena menu itself where it should have been all along.
Smarter Opponents
We rebuilt the battle AI around a single scoring system instead of the several it had grown into.
The most noticeable change is that difficulty now affects how far ahead the AI thinks, not just how much HP the enemy has. Opponents also consider MP costs before committing to expensive skills, and they'll recognize when a status is already applied instead of wasting a turn reapplying it.
Quality of Life
Auto Team now fills all six slots properly. If you already had heroes in your party it would sometimes leave you a hero short, which is fixed (the same issue affected Arena team selection)
Fixed moving heroes between Barracks rooms
Fixed claiming several completed fusions at once
Active fusions now show up in the Fusion Tower list correctly
Equipped gear now refreshes on the hero page
Fixed the crafting screen not refreshing
Localization
Localization work has continued across all supported languages, covering the new profile creation flow, the Fusion Tower systems, auto-repeat options, exchange screens and the Arena updates.
Fixes
A large pass this time around, particularly on stability.
Battle
Fixed a softlock after a failed dungeon
Fixed a battle softlock involving Jeanne's skills
Fixed battles locking up during auto-battle
Fixed status effect visuals trying to play on defeated heroes
Heroes
Fixed grafted elements not showing on icons, filters, tooltips and effectiveness previews
Fixed newly recruited heroes showing no element until their first battle
Fixed hero palettes displaying incorrectly in several menus
Fixed missing talents on some heroes, and fixed heroes with four talents breaking the journal
Fixed hero names missing in a few places
Progression
Fixed Command Level progression, including cases where it showed as 0
Fixed Master Level not being set correctly after boss dungeons
Fixed quest and achievement tracking, including time and artifact based achievements
Fixed experience and items not tallying correctly in run summaries
Fixed a crash when receiving artifact rewards
Fixed Ascension issues
Presentation
Fixed the transition from the Preparation menu, where the world was briefly visible over the loading screen
Fixed your commander staying visible over the title screen after leaving a dungeon
Fixed avatar loading issues
Fixed missing UI sounds caused by an audio loading conflict
Fixed the message of the day on offline startup
We also did a cleanup pass on the game's data that corrected over 1,500 malformed entries, which was quietly behind a number of the crashes above.
Let us know
As always, if you have feedback, suggestions or questions about any of this, we'd love to hear it. The offline mode and the run modifiers in particular are systems we'd like to keep building on, so tell us what you'd want to see next.