Hello, everyone! Today's patch is a very exciting one for me as it addresses some things that we've felt were missing from the game for quite some time but weren't considered high enough importance to prioritize them over the release of chapter 2. It also brings with it some balance changes and other quality of life improvements.
One of the main drawbacks of the game in our eyes has been the one and done nature of the areas as you travel through them and we've recently decided on a way to address this:
Introducing Shrines of the Eternal Flame!
Constructed by the Order of the Eternal Flame, these shrines are located throughout the world as places where the most devout could come to worship. Lighting the candles at these shrines will grant you a permanent bonus to the potency of your destruction spells!
You'll encounter these shrines throughout your journey, but they won't always be accessible when you first find them. From time to time, you'll need to learn a new ability in order to traverse the path that leads to them. This isn't meant to be something overly tedious, so don't expect to have to make hour long treks returning to them, but do keep your eyes peeled for some that you may want to return to later. These shrines will provide you with a very worthwhile incentive to backtrack and an opportunity to discover hidden treasures you may have missed your first time through. In a future patch we'll also be changing up the enemies that you encounter when backtracking--after all, the world is being invaded...there should be invaders!
The second major improvement to the game is an overhaul of the options menu. Up until now the main menu has been relegated to a means of adjusting settings(if you could find them all) with no means of tracking your progress. That changes today! This update adds 3 new pages to the menu book. You can now keep track of your stats and perk bonuses on the main character sheet, see recent developments in your adventure on the journey summary page, and perhaps most useful, you can now reference a list of the Serafin spells you've learned to learn more about them and find casting instructions for those you may have forgotten. Beyond that, we've also added tabs to the sides of the book to make navigating between these different pages a bit easier and more noticeable.
Full patch notes:
- Added Shrines of the Eternal Flame to the game as a means of increasing the potency of your destructive magic and encouraging exploration.
- Added a character sheet to the menu book where you can view your current stats and perk bonuses.
- Added a journey summary page to the menu book where you can view recent developments pertaining to your adventure.
- Added a spell sheet to the menu book where you can view information regarding the spells you've learned on your adventure and how to cast them.
- Improved the means of navigating the menu book with tabs.
- Remade the burning effect on enemies to both look better and be more performant.
- Arrows are now properly armor piercing, so no more damage mitigation from enemy helmets and the like.
- Tweaked the way your body collides with the environment to make it less likely that you'll be able to push your face into meshes and see through them in some areas.
- Tweaked the way mined ore spawns so that it should never spawn inside a mesh where you might not see it.
Bug Fixes
- Corrected an issue that would cause the projectile at the Sanctuary altar to sometimes disappear if it hit your hand.
- Fixed a bug that prevented torches from glowing properly when targeted with kinesis.
- Corrected a potential exploit that would allow you to bypass the main gate in the Serafin Castle courtyard.
Additions and Improvements
See this stuff in more detail in our latest devlog!
That's all for this patch! As always, we invite everyone who'd like to share their feedback and help us improve the game to our discord. The next update will be just as exciting, and we can't wait to show you guys what we have planned! And, of course, chapter 3 is being worked on alongside these improvements. Until next time, happy adventuring!