Hello everyone! Sorry for the lack of updates over the last few days. I’ve reached a point that a lot of developers eventually hit where I have to admit: “just fast enough” is no longer fast enough. As Portalborn has grown, it naturally takes more time to build, test, and verify changes. The biggest slowdown lately has been my automated Playwright test suite. Before I push builds live, those te…
Hello everyone! A window-mode fix, from a player report. 🖥️ BORDERLESS IS NOW ACTUALLY BORDERLESS It wasn't. It was the normal window, resized to fit inside the desktop — so you still saw the title bar, and the taskbar stayed on top of the game. ⚠️ This was the default mode, so most players have been running it. Now it does what the name says: no window frame, covering the entire display, task…
Numpad 7 and Numpad 1 were not working for some players. The cause was leftover keybindings from the northwest and southwest movement directions, which were removed a few updates ago — the directions were gone, but the old key mappings were still in saved settings and were overriding the new up/down bindings. Old keybindings are now cleared automatically on load. If you previously had to reset…
Hello everyone! A small one, from a player request. ⌨️ NUMPAD 7 AND 1 Up and Down never had a keybinding. ⭐ They do now — numpad 7 for up, numpad 1 for down. They line up with the compass display, where UP sits in the top-left cell and DOWN in the bottom-left. ⇒ The keys are exactly under the buttons. Both are rebindable in Settings like every other key. Thank you to 白起 for the suggestion — ⭐ a…
Hello everyone! Every boss in Portalborn is now keeping something — and if you beat them often enough, it might follow you home. 🐾 THIRTY-EIGHT BOSSES. THIRTY-EIGHT PETS. Every boss has its own unique pet. ⭐ There is no shared drop pool — the Wendigo's cub comes from the Wendigo, and nowhere else. If you want a particular pet, you know exactly which fight to go back to. Beat a boss for the fir…
Hello everyone! Elements now do something. ⚗️ ELEMENTAL REACTIONS When a spell or ability leaves its element on an enemy, the next hit can react with it. Five reactions currently exist: SHATTER — Frost on the target, followed by a hit with no element of its own. Deals bonus damage. CONDUCT — Frost, then Lightning. The current arcs to every enemy in the fight. MELT — Frost, then Fire. The result…
Hello everyone! This update is mostly about weapons, and it's the first piece of the hero-class work to reach the base game. ⚡ WEAPONS NOW HAVE ELEMENTS Two new damage types have been added: Lightning and Shadow. They join Fire, Frost, and Holy, each with their own on-hit lines in both languages. More importantly, affixes that promise an element now actually deliver one. A Glacial weapon deals…
Hello everyone! A short one, entirely about the Portal Workshop. THE DELETE BUTTON WASN'T THERE If you tried to delete a custom item and couldn't find the button, it genuinely wasn't on your screen. The item list at the bottom of the Equipment Forge was being squeezed down to zero height by the form above it. On a maximised 1080p window, the entire list was invisible and unclickable. The delete…
Hello everyone! This update is mostly about Workshop-created content, including one fix that matters a great deal if you play in Chinese. CUSTOM CONTENT WAS BEING MANGLED IN CHINESE If you play in Chinese, anything you created in the Portal Workshop could have English words inside it automatically translated. An item you named Shadow Dagger could display as Shadow匕首. A room called The Volcanic…
Hello everyone! Two fixes, both from player reports. WORKSHOP MERCHANTS Merchants created in the Portal Workshop weren't working. You could place one, talk to them, and even accept a quest from them — but trying to buy anything gave the message: "You can only buy items from an active merchant shop." The merchant itself was being created correctly. The problem was that its shop data was being di…
Hello everyone! A maintenance update. No gameplay changes in this one. A MUCH SMALLER DOWNLOAD Portalborn's install has been carrying a large amount of material it never actually used — development leftovers, superseded files, and art that belongs to the Steam store page rather than the game itself. All of it is gone. The install is roughly 235 MB smaller, and future updates should be smaller a…
Hello everyone! This update is almost entirely thanks to player reports, including one issue that could prevent a quest from being completed. Celestial Rift Quests If you play in Chinese, several Celestial Rift quest objectives were telling you to use the wrong command. The objectives said 查看, which is the look command. Following the quest instructions exactly would simply show the room descrip…
Hello everyone! Several of you have asked me to reduce the levelling grind. This update does that — and fixes some rough parts of the progression curve at the same time. ⚡ LEVELLING Portal clears now award substantially more experience, especially at higher levels. The old progression curve had some surprisingly hard walls in it. Crossing level 80 could nearly double the number of portal clears…
Hello everyone! A recent update introduced a serious problem with the command line: Backspace could no longer delete a typo while you were typing. On the default controls, Backspace is also the shortcut for returning focus to the terminal. After that shortcut was added, the game was intercepting the key even when you were already typing in the command line. Worse, every intercepted press could…
Hello everyone! This one is about knowing what's actually in the game. Portalborn has grown a lot since launch, and much of it arrived through patch notes that a new player will never have seen. So the Player Guide has been rebuilt. 📖 The Player Guide Every page has been rewritten, and two new ones have been added. That's thirteen pages, in both English and Simplified Chinese. If you've never…
Hello everyone! This is the largest set of mechanical changes I've made since launch, and almost all of it is in your favour. Let me start with the part that matters most. ⚔️ Multiclassing No Longer Penalises You Here's something that has been quietly wrong since the beginning. Your XP requirement was calculated from your total level — every class level you'd ever earned, added together. That m…
Hello everyone! Workshop portals were not appearing for players using Simplified Chinese. The Workshop hub itself loaded correctly, but the list of available portals was missing entirely. This affected Steam subscriptions and locally imported Workshop content, and had been happening since roughly July 24th. The issue was discovered after 白起 asked a Workshop author how to reach their content. Fr…
Hello everyone! Two more fixes, both thanks to reports from Wonberger. They've pointed out several small things over the last few days that were easy for me to overlook after spending so much time staring at the same interfaces. Thank you for taking the time to report them. "of the of" in Item Names Generated items could produce names like: Vampiric Sylvan Parrying Dagger of the of Venom or: Gl…
Hello everyone! This one starts with an apology. Steam Workshop content could not be imported. At all. If you subscribed to something and tried to load it, the button did nothing — no error, no message, nothing. It had been that way for longer than I'd like to admit, and I only discovered it because I went to play someone else's work and couldn't. A Shoutout, and a Sorry Creationskelly uploaded…
Hello everyone! 🧭 Up and Down on the Compass The clickable compass had buttons for all four diagonal directions — despite the fact that no room in Portalborn has ever used diagonal movement. Clicking any of them simply produced an error. Meanwhile, the compass had no UP or DOWN buttons. Plenty of rooms actually use those. That's now fixed. UP and DOWN have replaced the unused diagonal buttons,…
Hello everyone! This update brings several improvements to everyday play: a proper inventory window, command-line equipment comparison, faster keyboard navigation, and several language fixes. And a big thank you to Wonberger, who reported several of the issues and suggestions addressed here in a single day. Two came from suggestions, and one was a bug I probably wouldn't have found on my own. �…
Hello everyone! The base classes just received their first major combat rework. Most class passives used to be exactly that: passive. A few percent more damage, some dodge, a little regeneration — numbers you chose once and rarely thought about again. The new versions are designed around something different: They ask you to play around them. The New Passives Warrior — Bulwark. Damage you take i…
A few numbers were lying to you. They aren't anymore. Thank you to Megan for reporting both of these issues — especially the second one, since it took a very specific portal and object to finally pin down what was happening. Monster inspection showed the wrong stats When you examined a monster, the inspection window was showing the level, HP, and attack values from that monster's original templ…
Hello everyone! Tired of losing loot because your inventory is full? Tired of stopping a perfectly good grinding session just to clear out your pack? Struggle no more! From now on, if your pack is full when a piece of gear drops, it will be sent straight to your mailbox instead of disappearing forever. You'll still get the usual warning that your inventory is full, but you can keep fighting, fi…
Hello everyone! A New Consumable: Attunement Stones Finding a piece of gear with exactly the stat spread you want, only to outlevel it an hour later, has always been a small tragedy. Attunement Stones are meant to fix that. Using one raises a piece of equipment to your current level. Its stats scale proportionally, preserving the roll quality and stat spread that made the item worth keeping—the…
Hello everyone! This update focuses on making equipment easier to compare, improving the crafting workflow, and removing a few small frustrations from everyday play. Several of these changes came directly from player feedback. Thank you to everyone who took the time to explain where the interface was slowing you down. Gear Tooltips Now Separate Base Stats from Modifications Previously, equipmen…
Hello everyone! This update completely rebuilds Celestial Rift , transforming it from a procedurally generated portal into the largest handcrafted area in Portalborn so far. Thank you, as always, for the bug reports, suggestions, and patience. Several fixes in this update came directly from players finding things I never would have discovered on my own. Celestial Rift The original Celestial Rif…
Hello everyone! A small hotfix for Dread Catacombs. Two examinable objects were highlighted but did not respond to clicks: the burial slabs in the Hall of Silent Rest, and the sealed sarcophagus in the Embalmer's Workshop. Both are quest objectives, so if you were clicking them and nothing happened, that was a bug—not something you were doing wrong. Typing the interaction command still worked,…
Hello everyone! This update adds Dread Catacombs , a completely rebuilt portal and the first example of a new direction for Portalborn. Thank you for your patience over the last several days. This update took longer than I expected, and I want to explain why—because the reason is more important than the dungeon itself. Dread Catacombs The old Dread Catacombs was procedurally generated every tim…
Hello everyone! This update finally finishes the window layout issue—properly this time. Fixed: Window layout corruption after logging out The previous update fixed part of this problem, but Mr. A, who wishes to remain anonymous, reported that something still wasn't right. He was correct. The remaining issue turned out to be surprisingly subtle. When returning to the character selection screen…
Hello everyone! A few weeks ago I announced the Hero Class system and said it would take time. Since then, a lot of people have asked how it's progressing, so I thought I'd pull back the curtain a little and show you what "working on Hero Classes" has actually meant. Along the way, another major design decision has emerged—one that I think will change Portalborn just as much as the Hero Classes…
Hello everyone! This is a small update that finally finishes a bug that took several attempts to track down. Fixed: Window layout no longer breaks after logging out The last patch fixed the layout breaking when you closed and reopened the game. Mr. A (who wishes to remain anonymous) then found the half I'd missed: closing the game with the X button worked, and exiting through Settings worked—bu…
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Announcements are the developer’s own posts to the game’s Steam news feed: updates and their patch notes, in-game events, releases and sales. The important ones are marked on the players chart.