The scent of the grave hangs thick in the cold air…
Here we are. It took a while and a bit more, but the first new class since the Early Access release of Conquest Dark is here. Let me present you…
New Class: Necrolord
Necrolord is a class that brings together three different fantasies (all highly requested by players) into one.
As a master of the undead, it can raise the dead to fight alongside you, fulfilling the Necromancer fantasy. It can curse the living, slowing them down and rotting them away with damage over time effects, fulfilling the Warlock fantasy. And with heavy armor, melee weapons, and a touch of the frozen wastes, it also delivers on the Death Knight fantasy.
Necrolord comes with a full set of abilities built around each of these three archetypes, which you can freely mix and match to create your perfect dark fantasy champion together with new artifacts, armor, runes and powerful eldritch items.
New Feature: Allies and Companions
The most technically complex change coming with this update is the addition of Allies and Companions. These are non-player-controlled characters that fight alongside the player, scale with most player stats, and can even be issued simple command to focus their attacks on the player’s selected target.
The Allies and Companions arriving with this update are only the beginning and you can expect to see more of them in future updates. Would you like a fierce dire wolf at your side or perhaps a savage red-haired warrioress fighting alongside you? Tell us what you’d like to see in the comments below.
New Race: Forlorn
To double down on the dark fantasy theme, there’s also a new race: Forlorn. These former Auraboreans, now exiled to the north, have spent their time learning to commune with the dead and draw forbidden knowledge directly from the ominous Black Planet.
Developer Note: Right now all of the races feel a bit too ‘samey’. I’m going to address this in an upcoming smaller update by giving each race truly unique, build-changing passive bonuses. This change unfortunately did not make this update as I didn’t want to delay it further.
New Ritual: The First Graves
With the new class comes of course a new ritual, with three new boss fights together with a familiar returning face. The First Graves is a cold barren landscape littered with bones of the dead from the past. Completing the ritual will unlock most of the new stuff coming with this update.
New Damage Type: Umbral Damage and Cursed Condition
With the existing damage types tied closely to the Primordial and Cosmic gods, it only feels fair that the Black Planet and the Unknown Entity behind it get one of their own: Umbral Damage.
Umbral Damage is a special damage type that cannot be resisted, bypassing all resistances entirely. It can also cause enemies to become Cursed.
Cursed enemies move 50% slower, deal 50% less damage and take 25% more damage, making it a powerful all-around debuff, especially when combined with other conditions.
New Feature: Runewords
Last but not least there’s another new feature: Runewords. Once unlocked Runewords can be discovered by imbuing abilities with a specific sequence of three or five runes, granting powerful passive bonuses.
Runewords are deterministic, meaning their effects remain the same from ritual to ritual and powerful discoveries can be shared with the community.
Read more about Runewords in the previous blog.
There’s a lot more included in the update, so be sure to check out the full patch notes below. I’ll also be posting a new blog in the coming weeks with more details on what’s coming next.
- Irmstoi, Conquest Dark Solo Dev
Full Patch Notes
New Content
New Ritual: The First Graves
3x New Boss Encounters
New Faction: The Black Table
New Race: Forlorn
New Altar: Altar of Command - Ally Damage
New Class: Necrolord
3x New Primary Attack Abilities / Weapon Sets
Gravekeeper’s Scythe
Drain Soul
Runeblades
3x New Power Abilities
Summon Hulking Thrall
Summon Pale Witch
Curse Bolt
3x New Passive Abilities
Summon Deathguard
Summon Volatile Husk
Aura of Decay
2x New Movement Abilities
Wraithwalk
Glacial Onslaught
2x New Origins:
Bone Collector
Doomsayer
New Armor Set: Dreadknight Armor (Heavy)
3x New Artifacts:
Cursemark
Skull of Zoth
Zordolf’s Severed Finger
New Rune Type: Abyss
8x New Runes:
Primal: Adr - Added Attack Force
Abyss: Yth - Chance to Curse with Umbral Damage
Abyss: Ody - Damage to Cursed
Abyss: Kyn - Increased Proc Chance
[Community Request] Abyss: Ydr - Inverted Attack Force
Abyss: Lith - Ally Summon Amount
Eldritch: Xyl - Increased Effectiveness of Abyss Runes
Eldritch: Zhy - Umbral Damage and Damage Type Converted to Umbral
2x New Eldritch Items:
Nhalzûr, the Soul Eater
Koroth, Helm of Command
New Unique: Deathspeaker’s Handwraps (Common Gloves), replaces Deathbringer’s Handwraps.
Gameplay and Systems
New Feature: Runewords
New Feature: Allies and Companions
New Damage Type: Umbral Damage
New Condition: Cursed
11 New Stats:
Max Lesser Allies
Max Greater Allies
Max Companions
Ally Damage
Ally Health
Ally Summon Amount
Umbral Damage
Chance to Curse with Umbral Damage
Damage to Cursed
Health on Kill
Runeword Discovery
Removed all additional selection bonus upgrades from the game. Some of the bonuses from these are now baked in to the selections by default.
Some powerful stats such as dodge and movement charges can no longer be enhanced on armor items.
Enemies will now enrage if they stay alive for too long gaining stacking damage, movement and attack speed bonuses. Elites and bosses take longer time to enrage. Akka fight is not affected by this change.
Collecting Dark Soul Fragments now also increases the reflected damage done to enemies through the damage taken debuff that player gets from the fragments.
Removed Sigils and Auras proficiencies from the game. The abilities that previously required these now require other more commonly available proficiencies and the origins that lost these will now have new bonuses available.
[Community Request] Added support for negative (inverted) Attack Forces. Abilities that have negative Attack Force now pull enemies towards the origin of the damage instead of away from it.
Primordial Dark Rituals (Akka fight) no longer reroll armor equipment when using premade builds. Instead it now directly grants the exact item configured for the build. This prevents the long freezes that could occur when the game had to reroll hundreds or, in some cases, thousands of times.
You can now set exact required stats for chainmail armor through build planner.
Completely rewrote the save system. Save files are now stored in the Windows user folder and separated by Steam User ID. Existing saves are automatically migrated to the new system.This should prevent players from accidentally overwriting their save files when family sharing the game or playing with multiple steam accounts.
NOTE: If you play fully offline with no internet connection and Steam closed the game will default to the last Steam save used on that machine. If no Steam save is available the game will use a separate fully local save file instead.
User Interface
Improved the stats display on tooltips.
Stats that cannot be enhanced are now marked by a lock icon.
Added new class icons and improved visuals of some of the other icons.
Origin bonuses are no longer listed alongside other stats on the character sheet. They can now be viewed through the character tooltip next to the character model.
Unique Armor pieces are no longer secret unlocks and show up on the reward track for rituals and factions.
[Community Request] Damage Meters can now be turned on/off when other in-game menus are open.
[Community Request] Some non-essential keybindings can now be unbound by pressing backspace.
Added the option to reset keybindings to default values.
[Community Request] By default Auto Build Mode keybind is not bound to prevent players from accidentally hitting it.
Corrected some game guide entries that had inconsistent wording on several stats and added new game guide entries.
Balance Changes
Stats
[Community Request] Attack Reach stat base value increased from 1.25% to 2.5% for Armor and Soul Fragments.
Instant Attack Chance has been renamed to Rapid Attack Chance. For Primary Attack Abilities the stat remains unchanged. For all other abilities the cooldown reduction has been lowered from 95% to 50%.
This makes the stat more consistent with Primary Attack Abilities, which still have a casting animation that was/is not affected by Rapid Attack Chance.
Attack Force stat base value reduced from 25% to 10%.
[Community Request] Permanent orbiting projectiles such as Arcane Orbs and Spike Balls distance from player no longer scales with Attack Reach.
Bosses and Enemies
Azgoroth the Doombringer: Now deals Umbral Damage with his abilities.
Classes
Incapacitate (Mastery): Now has Chance to Curse with Umbral Damage instead of Chance to Freeze with Lunar Damage.
Obliterate (Mastery): Damage to Injured increased from 15% to 30%.
Weapon Sets, Abilities and Artifacts
Shadowstrikes: Now deals Umbral Damage.
Mark of Shadow: Now deals Umbral Damage.
Edge of Darkness: Now deals Umbral Damage.
Sigil of Flames: Reduced beam amount from 2 to 1. Increased damage from 25% to 50%.
Cosmic Ray: Changed mastery bonus from Damage to Injured to Resistance Piercing Chance.
Moved Hell Clock artifact from Gates of Kharathia to Obsidian Bulwark.
Ring of Ruin now stacks from all damage sources, including Burning.
Armor and Set Bonuses
Umbrothuun, Hood of the Dead
Added missing all resistance bonus.
Reduced proc chance stat from 100% to 20%.
Kharathia Armor Set:
2-Set Bonus: Increased Critical Hit Chance from 5% to 15%.
3-Set Bonus: Reduced damage to Elites from 250% to 150%
Bandit Armor Set:
2-Set Bonus: Chance to Stun With Primal Damage increased from 7.5% to 15%.
Cultist Armor Set:
2-Set Bonus: Chance to Freeze With Lunar Damage increased from 7.5% to 15%.
Savage Armor Set: Damage Reduced per Life Lost stat replaced with Damage to Elites stat.
Chromatic Unique Set: Adjusted balance and added bonuses related to Umbral Damage.
Adjusted the unlock locations of some unique armor pieces.
Bug Fixes
Fixed multiple bugs that would sometimes cause player not to take damage from enemy movement abilities.
Fixed a bug with the auto-build system where it could fail to select the correct runes when three identical runes were present together with Yiln.
Disabled shader warm-up during game loading to prevent random crashes affecting some players.