Highlights
- Act II - The Red Moor opens in Early Access. If your hero has finished Act I, you can now travel on to the Red Moor, solo or with a party.
- Friends list (O). Add friends, see who is online, join their games, invite them to yours and whisper them.
- Projectiles you can dodge. Cinder Bolt and enemy arrows, skulls and fire bolts now really fly, and they hit whatever they touch.
- Skugarth is a real fight now. He sits on his throne, you can hear him, his heavy blows knock you back and the fight lasts longer.
- UNSTUCK, a difficulty display and debuff icons.
- Smaller updates from now on. This update is a full download. After this one, patches download only what changed.
Act II Early Access - The Red Moor
- Act II is open in Early Access. You can play it now, but it is still being built and will change between updates. The first time you arrive in a session, an "ACT II - EARLY ACCESS" notice tells you this.
- Explore the regions of the Red Moor, fight new enemy families and collect new gear. Packs patrol the Moor, some wait in ambush, and events break out as you travel.
- Blood Infused enemies are rare, stronger foes that have their own blood abilities. They drop better loot, and you earn a Blood Mark for the first one you kill in each region.
- On some visits a Blood Moon rises and more Blood Infused roam the Moor.
- 18 new Act II items: staves, armour and jewellery across three item tiers. Weapons dropped on the Moor match the area's level.
- The quest tracker shows what you can do on the Moor, and the Codex's Act II page is now open.
- Co-op: a party travels to the Red Moor from the waystone in Ashenmoor. Everyone sees the countdown and anyone can cancel it. Every hero in the party must have finished Act I.
- Not in this update: the Act II story chapters and the Moor's dungeons. Both arrive in coming updates.
Friends & Social
- Press O to open your Friends list.
- Pick a friend name. You get a Name#TAG to share, and you add friends by theirs. You can accept or decline requests, and the Recent tab lets you add people you have played with.
- See who is online and whether they are in the menu or in a game.
- JOIN a friend's game, or INVITE a friend to yours.
- Hosts get a new Open to friends switch in the co-op menu. When it is on, friends can join from their Friends list. When it is off, only players with your code can join.
- Whispers: type `/w Name message` to whisper a friend and `/r` to reply. Whispers show in General chat in their own colour.
- Right-click a name in chat to Mute, Block or Report. You can remove or block friends from the list, and you can choose to appear offline.
- The friends service goes live with this update.
Classes & Combat
- Cinder Bolt is now a real projectile. It leaves her hand at the end of the cast, flies straight and hits the first enemy it touches. Enemies can step out of its path, so lead your shots. It works the same way in co-op.
- Her spells now go off at the right moment in their cast animations.
- Blood Rush now covers its full distance, including up slopes and steps, and still stops at walls. It is also smooth for every player in co-op.
- Dodge covers its full distance, uphill too, and is smooth in co-op.
- Gamepad: the stick no longer fights against dodges, charges and other movement skills.
- Fortress archers, skull throwers and fire casters now fire real projectiles you can dodge. The fire bolt no longer shows a landing ring, so watch the bolt itself.
- Spat globs now hit whoever is standing where they land.
- Blood Spitters can only attack when they can see you and are on your screen.
- New attack warnings on the ground. They are soft, smoky markers that follow slopes and steps and fill up as the attack lands. The hard circles are gone.
- When hits land quickly one after another, the hit flash is softer. Enemies no longer turn into glowing white outlines.
- Enemies have more varied hurt and death animations, and they no longer sink into the floor when they die.
Bosses
- He walks back to his throne and sits on it during the phase where he cannot be hurt.
- His voice is much louder and clearer, and the music and effects get quieter while he speaks.
- His heavy blows knock you back and can daze you for a moment.
- The fight is tougher. He has more health and scales with your level, his later phases always play out with their reinforcements, and Sundering Blow no longer deals double damage to him.
- The pit gate is clearly open when you arrive and slams shut behind you.
- His intro cutscene has been removed, so the fight starts right away. His roar and title banner are still there.
Items
- 5 new level-24 items so heroes level 26-29 can find an upgrade in every slot before Act II: Pit-warden's Helm, Lode-hauler's Gauntlets, Pit-scale Leggings, Deep-stair Boots and Ore-chain Belt.
- New Act I jewellery: Gravedigger's Band and Miner's Medallion, which fill gaps in early jewellery upgrades.
- Fairer loot: a drop now picks the slot first and then the item, so every slot gets its fair share. Weapon drops also favour your class, so the Priest finds more staves and the Berserker finds fewer.
- Rotting Peasants now carry a Rust-bitten Sickle, and they can drop it.
- New icons for the Ember-wick Staff, Pyrekeeper's Staff, Charnel Censer Staff, Bone-bead Rosary and Tollkeeper's Ring.
World
- Ashenmoor: the floating banner and the stray sparks are gone, the torches and the forge are fixed, and the town got a general visual pass.
- The fortress: the exit gate in each depth now has a swirling veil with a soft violet light.
- Ground effects: blood, ichor and venom leave soft, wet stains. The Priest's scorched ground cracks unevenly and smoke drifts over it. The venom glow is toned down, and overlapping ash no longer stacks hard rims.
- Normal kills leave a little blood again.
- The character creator scene has new lighting from lanterns, windows and embers.
- Act I lighting pass: the forest is easier to read at night, and the harsh red light on the road to the fortress is gone.
- Rotting Peasants now hold their pitchforks properly.
- Sound mix: combat effects sit a little lower, so voices, bosses and music come through more clearly.
UI & Quality of Life
- Difficulty now shows next to the zone name, in its own colour (Normal, Hard, Nightmare).
- UNSTUCK is in the Esc menu. After a short cast it moves you to a safe spot on the same map, and then it has a cooldown. In co-op it moves only you.
- If you saved while stuck in a closed-off spot, Continue now walks you out.
- If you click ground that can't be reached by a path, your hero now walks straight toward it.
- Debuff icons for Poisoned, Webbed and Dazed.
- Map: labels no longer cover icons or each other, and your hero marker is always drawn on top.
- Chat: the history shows at once and you can type while it connects. After a long idle it reconnects quietly in the background.
- Show performance (Settings > Gameplay) shows latency and frame rate above the minimap. In co-op, guests always see their latency.
- When an enemy is behind a low wall but still outlined, the cursor shows that you can attack it.
- Skill names in the skill tree are easier to read.
- The Codex rows have a new design.
Co-op & Online
- Act II in co-op: party travel from the Ashenmoor waystone, with the destination shown during the countdown.
- New heroes in co-op: the co-op menu now opens the full character creator, so you can make any class, including the Ashen Priest.
- Contact projectiles, dodge, Blood Rush and Skugarth's knockback all work in co-op.
- Friends can join you straight from their Friends list when your game is Open to friends.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed enemies sometimes being untargetable behind a wall or object even though their outline showed.
- Fixed Blood Spitters attacking through walls and from off screen.
- Fixed clicks near a waystone starting its channel instead of letting you walk away.
- Fixed Skugarth's pit gate looking closed when you arrived even though you could walk in.
- Fixed Skugarth standing up instead of sitting on his throne.
- Fixed Skugarth being too quiet to hear.
- Fixed chat freezing on "connecting..." after a long idle.
- Fixed your difficulty not being shown anywhere in the UI.
- Fixed getting stuck behind a rock in the mines and being put back there on every Continue.
- Fixed sparks floating where braziers used to stand in Ashenmoor.
- The flask now appears when you pick up its quest.
- Rewrote an odd-sounding line in the Codex.
- Fixed enemy projectiles hitting where you stood when they were launched instead of where they actually flew.
- Fixed Cinder Bolt launching on the click instead of at the end of the cast.
- Fixed enemies climbing onto rocks where their loot couldn't be reached.
- Fixed dodge getting stuck against rocks, which also blocked click-to-move.
- Fixed the BACK button covering the Colour row in Video settings.
- Fixed co-op only letting you create a Berserker.
- Fixed enemies ending their death animation sunk into the floor.
- Fixed normal kills leaving no blood on the ground.
Install
- This update is a full download (about 6-7 GB). The game's content is now split into parts, so future updates download only what changed and will be much smaller.
- Your heroes and saves carry over.
Known Issues
- Windows Smart App Control may block the game on some new PCs until the game is code-signed (we are on it). If the launcher says the game could not start, check Windows Security > App & browser control > Smart App Control, and tell us on Discord before changing any setting.
- Act II is in Early Access. Areas, enemies, loot and balance will change, and some things are unfinished.
- The Act II story chapters and the Moor's dungeons are not in this update yet.