Varthos – Heir to the Throne
New Update: Greed & Peril
Patch Notes – April 11th, 2026 | Version B-0.42.1
Hello Community, our latest patch is live! We’ve been working hard on stability, quality of life, and new content. Here are the highlights of the update:
First Iteration of Difficulty Levels
We have introduced three difficulty settings, allowing you to tailor the experience to your preference:
Merciful: Your character is preserved upon death – ideal for those who want to explore and learn the world at their own pace.
Normal: The classic Varthos experience.
Brutal: For those seeking the ultimate challenge – featuring significantly more dangerous enemies but rewarded with increased loot quality.
New Random Event: "Nibblewick"
Keep your eyes peeled during your runs for this nimble little thief! Nibblewick carries a sack full of stolen potions. Every hit you land has a chance to make him drop part of his loot. But beware: do not let greed blind you! Nibblewick is incredibly fast and loves to lure unsuspecting players right into the middle of dangerous monster packs. In the future, we plan to add more random events to make every run feel unique.
Graphics & Display Options
New "Render Scale" Slider: Added under Video Settings. This allows you to downscale the 3D world's resolution independently from the UI, significantly improving performance on lower-end machines. If the game looks too blurry, move the slider back toward 1.0 (default).
Refined Multi-Monitor Support: Updated cursor locking logic to prevent accidental focus loss during gameplay.
Exclusive Fullscreen: Now truly exclusive; locks the cursor to the game window for maximum stability and performance.
Borderless Window: Ideal for multitasking; fills the screen while allowing the cursor to move seamlessly to other monitors.
Windowed: Traditional windowed mode for resolutions smaller than your desktop.
Quality of Life Improvements (QoL)
Character Names: Your last used name is now saved, so you don't have to re-enter it every time you create a new character.
Spectator Mode: The settings menu is now fully accessible while in spectator mode.
Item Overlays: Increased the font size for item info overlays (names of items on the ground).
Inventory Management: Increased the size of inventory tab buttons and added a short hover delay before a tab activates. This prevents accidental tab switching while dragging and dropping items.
Balance & Bug Fixes
General Balancing: We’ve made several fine-tuning adjustments to monster health and damage scaling. Additionally, mana costs and cooldowns for various skills have been optimized for a smoother and fairer gameplay flow.
FPS Fix: Resolved an issue where setting the FPS to anything other than 60 would not apply correctly. It should now function as intended.
AI Behavior: Fixed a bug where some enemies were accidentally healing the player. They will now exclusively heal their allies again.
Skill VFX:
Visual effects for "Rapid Fire" are now correctly removed when the skill ends.
Movement-based skills like "Explosive Dash" or "Blinding Leap" sometimes placed their VFX incorrectly – this has been addressed.
Multiplayer & Steam:
Steam friend invites were not working properly; this has been fixed.
Resolved a rare issue that prevented hosting a new session after quitting a previous one (which formerly required a game restart).
Character Creation: Fixed an edge case where cancelling the creation of a new character could cause the stash to get stuck, failing to display the inventory.
Stash: Fixed a rare case where interacting with additionally unlocked stash tabs was not working correctly during a dungeon run.
Outlook: We are working at full pressure on Controller Support! We expect to launch the first public playtest later in April. More details on how to sign up will follow in a separate post.
Thank you for your feedback and support! The Varthos Development Team