The last couple of updates have touched a lot of Hollow.

Patch 3.1.9 focused heavily on stability, combat behavior, quests, UI, and general quality-of-life. Patch 3.2.0 continues that work with a larger pass on character creation, progression, skills, dungeon pacing, and several issues uncovered through player testing.

Thank you to everyone who has been sending bug reports, screenshots, footage, and feedback. A lot of the fixes below came directly from people playing the game and finding things I simply wouldn’t have caught alone.

Patch 3.1.9

This update was primarily about making the current game more stable and reliable.

Changes included:

Major quest and dialogue fixes

Side-quest system improvements

Combat and enemy AI fixes

Fixed player Block incorrectly negating magical attacks

Fixed ranged enemies attacking or firing through walls

Improved loading screens for both New Game and Load Game

Added the How To Play section to Options

Continued wall-fade improvements

Audio-system cleanup

Waypoint improvements

Town animation handling

Player animation switching between town and dungeon states

AMD-related stutter/freeze improvements

Switched Hollow to DX11 by default for improved stability

Various UI and gameplay fixes throughout the game

This patch also included a lot of under-the-hood cleanup aimed at making the game easier to continue patching without introducing new problems elsewhere.

Patch 3.2.0

3.2.0 focuses more heavily on progression, character creation, skills, and dungeon flow.

Character Creation

Character creation has received another usability pass.

The flow is being broken into clearer step-by-step panels, allowing players to move backward and change earlier choices before finalizing the character.

A dedicated starting-skill selection screen is also being used instead of reusing the normal in-game Skill Tree.

Difficulty selection now has separate artwork for:

Normal

Hard

Terror

The displayed badge changes with the currently selected difficulty.

Duplicate character names are also being supported properly. Hollow already stores a separate internal SaveId, so players can create multiple characters with the same visible name without overwriting one another.

Attribute Allocation

Attribute spending on the Character Sheet has been improved.

You can now:

temporarily assign points

remove points before committing

preview the resulting stat changes

confirm only the points you want to spend

keep the rest banked for later

Players are no longer forced to spend every available attribute point at once.

Skills & Mana Costs

The skill system received a broad numerical audit.

Several inconsistencies were found between:

skill descriptions

Gameplay stat displays

actual runtime values

mana costs

cooldown precision

localization

These are being brought back into alignment.

Mana-using abilities also better reflect the intended progression where investing additional ranks improves mana efficiency.

The skill UI now shows the actual next-rank mana cost where applicable, so instead of simply being told that a skill becomes cheaper, you can see exactly what the next rank will cost.

Dungeon & Enemy Changes

Enemy spawning across the dungeon has been reworked to improve encounter placement and pacing.

Dungeon scaling has also been adjusted to improve how levels feel as you move deeper into the Black Reliquary.

Skill Movement Fixes

Player testing uncovered an issue where certain targeted skills could effectively snap the player onto an enemy.

In some situations this could place the character too close to walls or geometry and potentially leave them stuck.

Normal targeted skills are intended to behave like an ARPG:

Click enemy → move naturally into range → execute skill.

They should not teleport the player onto the target.

Shadow Step remains the intentional repositioning skill, with additional attention being given to safe landing positions.

Quest Fixes

Several quest issues were audited and corrected.

One example is The Hungry Dead, where the quest required three corpse interactions even though only one valid corpse was being generated.

A separate target-ID typo was also found that would have prevented the following Hungry Dead kill stage from wiring correctly.

Other quest content is continuing to be audited to make sure required world objects, interactions, and progression paths actually exist and are reachable.

Player Voice System

Work has also begun on expanding player-character voice feedback.

The goal is to support male/female character barks for situations such as:

entering dungeon areas

special room or quest triggers

attempting to equip an item you cannot use

insufficient mana

inventory full

abilities being unavailable

other contextual gameplay moments

This is being integrated with Hollow's existing audio system rather than replacing the current NPC dialogue setup.

UI Cleanup

A few smaller UI issues are also being cleaned up, including item tooltips remaining visible after Inventory or Shop windows are closed.

Moving Forward

These patches are less about adding giant new systems and more about tightening the systems that are already there.

Hollow is at the point where player feedback is incredibly useful because people are finding edge cases that only appear when the game is played in ways I didn't expect.

I'm continuing to work through those reports as they come in.

Thanks again to everyone playing, reporting bugs, sending footage, and helping improve the game.

— Ded Hed Studios