Update 0.4.0: Active skills tree, Cloud mode, Daily Dungeon and more!

Hi everyone !

Update 0.4.0 is now available !

WARNING: Because of deep changes brought to the save files and the game in general, this update wipes saves that are older than 0.4.0 experimental. If you created your character on 0.4.0 experimental, only your inventory, active skills and passive skills and passive skills will be reset. We apologize for the inconvenience.

With this update, we are introducing the “Cloud mode”. In this mode, your save data (character, chest, house…) will be stored on our servers. You can still play in offline mode (with everything stored on your harddrive and no internet connection required) by clicking the “switch to offline” button on the main menu.
Multiplayer co-op is not available yet but Cloud mode is a first step in its direction.

With Cloud mode and 0.4.0, we are also introducing the daily dungeon: a daily randomly generated dungeon shared by every players. The daily dungeon is bigger than the random dungeon you are used to and should offer more challenge with more elite enemies and a boss at the end you have to kill to finish the dungeon. A new beautiful Orc Dungeon architecture is also available. Furthermore, the daily dungeon is timed and offer you a way to compete with your friend for who finishes the dungeon the fastest.
You can access the daily dungeon by talking to Don John in Amarth. You will also find the leaderboard next to him.
The daily dungeon is only accessible in Cloud mode.

With 0.4.0 also comes the new active skill tree which offers you customization options for each and every skill like more range, more damage, cost reduction, but also a few gameplay variants that completely modify the way the skill will work. We aim to develop 10 variants for each skill in the future, meaning a highly customizable gameplay.

Two new enemies are also joining the party with 0.4.0 :
the Grave Keeper, an elite warrior of the zombie horde who wields a deadly sword and leads its minions into the melee

and the Orc Warlock, a powerful sorcerer manipulating dark magic and taking an ethereal form to avoid direct fights

Finally, with this update come a lot of bug fixes, optimization, balancing and QOL improvements like, for example, the automatic positioning of the item’s text to avoid overlap :

You will find a complete list in the changelog below.

CHANGELOG

GENERAL:

• Cloud mode is now available ! In Cloud mode, your character saves are stored on our server instead of your hard drive. Co-op multiplayer is not available yet.
• The Active Skills Tree has been revamped ! You can now personalize your spells with different variants and they now all get their own dedicated tree with specific per-level improvements.
• You can now access Daily Dungeons ! Try to find the exit and beat the boss of the pre-generated Daily-Dungeon and compare your score to other players by consulting the Leaderboard in Amarth. This feature is only available in Cloud mode. Daily dungeon rewards are not enabled yet.
• The randomly generated dungeon key system have been removed. Instead, you will now have to kill the boss at the end of each floor before being allowed to continue.
• The mouse picking accuracy has been greatly improved. Targeting monsters should be easier and more reliable.
• The player now has a smooth rotation. This can be slightly modified by the “player turn rate” setting, in game settings (500=slow 1000=fast).
• We’ve improved performances in a lot of our game systems and fixed some FPS drops. Lower end CPUs should benefit the most from these improvements. We’ve also fixed multiple memory leaks which should improve ram usage slightly and fix some memory related crashes.
• Fixed various random crashes.

VISUALS:

• New weapon trails for One Handed combo
• New weapon trails for Two Handed Sword combo
• New weapon trails for Great Hammer combo
• New weapon trails for Dual Wield combo
• New weapon trails for Shield combo
• Fixed the nude player bug.
• Templar’s skill effect has been reworked.
• Fixed the Ice Breaker showing as a red ball.
• Camera Shake is now slightly stronger by default.
• Camera Shake is now stronger on critical strikes.
• Improved and optimized melee hit particle.
• Slightly reduced the camera speed from 22 to 17 for smoother movements.
• The colored outline on enemies, objects and NPCs have been reworked.
• Some particle effects have been optimized.
• New Wolcen.exe icon.
• Fixed persistent FX on fern
• Fixed the GI in release compilation
• Chests now stay visually opened when emptied.
• Fixed a bug in the weather system, the puddles are now drying correctly

UI:

• Revamped Main Menu ! We’ve completely reworked the main menu, including the ability for the player to switch between Cloud mode & offline mode.
• We’ve added a “News” window on the main menu summing up the last news and updates about the game.
• Active Skills icons have been redone and improved.
• The main menu will now automatically load the last character you played.
• The Active Skills Tree UI have been reworked.
• The Skills tooltips have been reworked.
• New Leaderboard UI.
• Item level is now displayed in the item details.
• New background for unique items.
• Improved housing mannequin UI.
• Sleep windows now closes automatically when you are done sleeping.
• Improved items rarity background for better readability.
• Fixed the Ice Breaker’s icon size.
• Fixed the flickering top screen health bar on allied NPC.
• Fixed the flickering passive skill tree tooltips.
• Fixed on-ground books text color.
• Optimized selection of skills in the PST
• Fixed persistant UI (fern, locked slot tooltip)
• Fixed uninitialized character sheet bug
• On-ground Loot text will now automatically organize to avoid overlapping
• Fixed camera zoom issue when the map is displayed
• Fixed potion timer z-depth issue
• Ally character’s health bar removed

HOUSING:

• Housing mannequins are back and should be free of bugs.
• Fixed housing items duplication glitch.

AUDIO:

• Added a Master volume slider
• Added player damaged sounds (hits from enemies).
• Added new Orcs & Zombies sounds.
• Added sounds for the Orc Warlock.
• Added torch weapon impacts.
• Added low health sounds and effects.
• Added Arrows Rain Skill sound.

ENVIRONMENT:

• The water reflections in caves have been reduced.
• Most caves are now darker.
• Various minor adjustments
• New Orc Dungeon architecture

CHARACTERS:

• The player is no longer pushed by enemies
• Explosion’s physics are not applied on player anymore
• The old Ogre has been reworked, is slightly bigger and has new attacks.
• New monster: the Orc Warlock. He uses his magic staff to cast powerful spells and will use his Ghost form to escape the fight if you engage him in close combat.
• New monster: the Grave Keeper, an undead giant wielding a rusty sword. He’ll swing his sword in wide arcs, slashing anyone foolish enough to stand in the way.
• Skeletons in the open world have temporarily been replaced by regular Undeads.
• Animation Optimization has been removed for large entities.

LOCALIZATION:

• Many items have been renamed to better fit their role and rarity.
• New text_ui_online.xml file.
• New community Finnish translation! Thanks Ammummummu!
• Various updates thanks to our awesome community.

GAMEPLAY:

• Fixed various issues when the player character was not facing its target in melee combat
• Monster health, damage and experience rewards have been rebalanced to fit the new armor and weapon values.
• Default player health values have been rebalanced to fit new monster damage values.
• Health and Health Regeneration given per constitution point have been rebalanced to fit new player health values.
• Enemies spawners now reset at 6:00am (in-game time).
• Equipped skills now gain 20% of player experience. Skills no longer gain experience when used.
• Reduced the skill learning time to 0.5 seconds and removed the particle FX.
• Weapon Style do not bind a spell on Right Click anymore.
• Decreased default Rage Loss from 5 to 4 points per second.
• Decreased default Time Before Rage Loss from 5 to 4 seconds.
• Slightly increased the drop chance of rare items.
• Decreased the dual wield damage penalty for the first two strikes.
• The Move Speed bonus given by Dexterity has been decreased.
• Templars now use Umbral Blast against foes instead of expulse blow.
• Grozogr now heals once his health reaches 40% and can only do it again once every minute.
• Grozogr has more health than before and can resist being frozen.
• Auto-Dashing damage is now based on a percentage of your weapon’s damage.
• The Health Regen boss modifier has been rebalanced.
• Dungeon Chests will now drop better loot, and have a higher chance to drop unique items.
• Damage calculation formula has been enhanced.
• Gold drops have been tweaked.
• Fixed the way Skill Damage from weapon factor is calculated.
• Fixed the Knock-down duration calculation.
• Fixed skills damage computation issues.
• Fixed skills that kept being casted when targeting an enemy even when the associated skill wasn’t pressed.
• Fixed blown away passive skill that sent enemies in the air.
• Fixed equipping a weapon reset the right mouse skill assignation.
• Fixed a bug where Weapon Damage wasn’t correctly calculated for regular attacks, especially when Dual Wielding.
• Fixed Damage beyond enemy’s max health not being shown.
• Fixed Dodge roll casting.
• Fixed Character not rotating when casting ray spells.
• Fixed Grozogr not seeing the player if shot from far away.
• Fixed a bug modifying the speed of projectiles once launched.
• Daily dungeons now spawn more elites.
• Caves daily dungeons will now be longer
• Daily dungeon local timer should now be more consistent with server timer

ITEMS

• A new “Unique” rarity now exists for designating relatively rare items. A Unique item is no Legendary item, but can be one of the most powerful in the game since it will pack a very specific list of affixes, sometimes uniques themselves, that perfectly fit a designated play style. The coolest Unique items will come in the future with their own visuals and gameplay effects, but for now you can simply enjoy collecting them all and maybe find the one that will really match your character. Unique items are recognizable by their purple name and decorated background. New unique items will periodically be added to the game.
• Every piece of armor and weapon has been rebalanced and given proper minimum level requirements.
• Armor pieces now have default affixes to better specialize players depending on their gear.
• The drop level of items now depends on monster level and not player level.
• The prosecutor is now a two-handed axe (was a two-handed hammer)
• New weapons are available to use : the Templar Sword, the Orcish Battleaxe and the unique sword Doomslayer.
• Lootables have been rebalanced.
• The loot rarity calculation formula has been slightly reworked.
• There is no randomization of the base stats of an item anymore, this is now done indirectly via the item’s quality.
• The effect of qualities on item stats has been increased. There is also more chance for an item to roll with a non-standard quality.
• Item rarities now have an associated minimum quality. Blue item cannot roll a used or broken quality, yellows will always roll with at least a reinforced quality and legendaries cannot roll beneath exceptional quality.
• Lots of armor parts models have been reworked to better fit your character’s body.

AFFIXES:

• Fixed the “All-Resistances” affix not affecting Poison Resistance.
• Decreased the effect and maximum stacks of movement speed given by potions.
• The health affix has been rebalanced to fit the new default health values.
• Balanced the critical damage affix.
• Balanced the Umbra Cost percent affix.
• Balanced the Rage Cost percent affix.
• Spell Damage will now roll on any mage item.
• Increased the Spell Damage bonus given by mage staves.
• Increased the physical damage given by the Bronze Ring.
• Re-balanced the general amount of attribute points given by affixes.
• Armor points and percent affixes will now roll on shields.
• Mage-type items will now roll bonuses to umbra regen in percent and not in points.
• Decreased the amount of resource points given by the templar cape.
• Life-on-hit now rolls on rings.
• Health-Regen now rolls on any armor piece or accessory.
• Mage-type items will now roll bonuses to resource pool in points and not in percent.

ACTIVE SKILLS:

• Lots of modifications have been brought to the active skills tree, and we’re slowly redesigning all the Skills of the game. We want each of them to be unique, rewarding and fun to use, but by entering this design phase we had to remove some skills and change others. Some skills are left without a tree but this is a side-effect of this transition period. We aim to have a few dozens skills with complete trees within a few months, each with a fully functioning and customizable gameplay.
• New spell : Umbral Blast
• New spell : Bladeslinger
• New spell : Arrows Rain
• The Arrows Rain skill will use the activated Ammo from your skill bar.
• The Laceration Skill (previously Daggers Rend) is now a Skill of its own, and not a Weapon-bound skill anymore.
• Ammunition Skills remain in the game for now, although they don’t have any experience tree. They will be redesigned soon.

PASSIVE SKILLS:

Thief
• The Light Armor Mastery skill has been moved to the Assassin section
• New skill: Swift Blades, which allow you to use Dexterity instead of Strength for Damage calculation when wielding one or two Daggers.
• Acrobatics and Vigorous Strikes have been rebalanced.
Hunter
• Enhanced Reflex has been rebalanced.
• Vitality now increases your Dodge Chance instead of your Dexterity.
Guardian
• Many skills have been deactivated since active Shield Blocking has been removed from the game. The Guardian Tree will be revamped soon.
Arcanist
• Rage Globe Understanding, Power Boost, Longer Power Boost, Extended Power Boost, Rage Globe Catalyst, Umbra Globe Catalyst and Lethal Magic have been rebalanced.
Legionary
• Enraged, Unfair Fight, Wrath and Change of Mind have been rebalanced.
Gladiator
• Renowned Target now increases your Strength only.
• Expert has been rebalanced.
• Killing Chain now increases your Attack Speed and Physical Damage instead of your Dexterity and Strength.
Trickster
• Gifted has been rebalanced.

Thank you for your continuous support ! We hope you’ll enjoy this patch !