Feedback Patch: Brighter Levels, Better Combat, and a Crash Fixed

Feedback Patch

A player left a long, thoughtful review of the game, and almost everything in this patch comes straight from it: levels that were too dark to navigate, a crash on the Brawler, blocking that did nothing, arrows that missed, and getting wedged in the scenery with no way out. Thank you for taking the time to write all of it down. Here is what changed.

Lighting and visibility

• The campaign levels are much brighter, and they stay that way. Three separate things were making levels dark. They opened at the exact darkest moment of the day cycle (moon just set, sun barely up), so "levels always start at dusk" was literally true. A full day only lasted eight minutes, so nightfall was always a few minutes off. And the clock never reset so a while spent in the Tower meant walking into the next level at midnight. Levels now open in usable mid-morning light every time, a full day lasts twenty four minutes, and there is a hard floor on how dark the world can get so even deep night stays readable. A separate bug where one effect was cancelling out the intended exposure in every scene is fixed too. Measured against the old build, the light you spawn into is about three and a half times brighter.
• The Brightness slider is a real gamma slider now. It was only turning the whole picture up, which blows out torches and sky long before you can see into the shadows. It now lifts the dark and mid tones and mostly leaves bright things where they were. You will find it at the top of Video settings, and it still lives under Accessibility too.
• A glowing class no longer makes the room darker. Lights that ride on your hero (the Wizard's staff glow, talent auras) were casting your own body as a shadow across everything in front of you, so a glowing class read darker than a plain one, which is exactly backwards. Cosmetic lights on a hero no longer cast shadows, whatever they come from. It is a little kinder on frame rate as well.

Combat

• Fixed a crash on the Dwarf Brawler. With both Quake Kick and Static Fists unlocked, attacking an enemy could kill the game outright: Static Fists arcs lightning between foes, and the arc's own damage kept re-triggering the arc until the game ran out of room. The same fault could be reached through any talent that chains or arcs, including the Druid's Static Grove. Fixed at the source, so those talents are safe again.
• The Berserker is no longer rooted to the spot by his own attacks. Every swing planted him in place for the whole chain, which is brutal for a class with no shield and no damage reduction: staying mobile is his defence. Now only the big spin finisher fully commits, and the ordinary swings let him keep his feet and reposition mid-combo.
• Melee attacks connect when they look like they should. Swings faced wherever the camera pointed and then checked a narrow arc a moment later, so a strike that visually landed could pass through nothing, especially against something that stepped aside mid-swing. Swings now settle onto a foe you were already aiming at. Affects the Knight, the Berserker and the Brawler, and the Brawler's short reach benefits most.
• Blocking is worth doing now. Before, a block just ate the hit and the enemy swung again, so there was no reason to raise the shield over stepping back. Now any block braces you (25% less damage taken for a few seconds), and a well-timed block, caught just after you raise the guard, is a parry: it staggers the attacker and your next few seconds of attacks hit 50% harder. Time the guard, open them up, punish.
• The Ranger's arrows go where you are aiming. Arrows leave the hand while your crosshair comes from the camera, and the two only lined up at long range, so close shots drifted right. Shooting downhill was worse: the game quietly flattened those shots level, so arrows sailed over anything below you. Both are fixed, and the bow now gets the same gentle aim assist the casters have.

Getting around

• Stuck in the scenery? You can free yourself. Getting wedged in a wall used to mean abandoning the run and losing everything you earned in it. Pause and use FREE ME under STUCK?, or press U (rebindable), and you will be set back down where you last stood safely. It only acts if you are genuinely stuck: press it when you are fine and it tells you so and leaves you where you are. It moves you only a few metres and has a short cooldown, so it is a rescue, not a shortcut.
• Your weapon loadout is reachable. The Loadout key (L by default) was listed in the controls but did nothing: the only way in was to find the table in the hub. The key now opens the loadout directly anywhere in the hub, and in a dungeon it tells you loadouts are set before a run rather than silently doing nothing.

The Crucible and Defend maps

• The farm's attackers actually attack the farm. On Defend maps, enemies could get stuck milling around the edge of the level while the buildings burned, because they could not work out a route in and simply gave up. They now find their way to the target and press toward it even where there is no clean path. This also fixes enemies stalling out and standing around in other maps.
• Crucible enemies can reach the whole arena now. The raised plaza platforms and their stairs were missing from the arena's movement map, so enemies could not climb up to them, and standing on the high ground let you fight a horde that could never reach you. Fixed, so the whole fortress is contested ground again.
• Crucible waves are the size they are meant to be. Waves built around certain enemy families (ogres, drakes, spiders, mimics) were quietly spawning short, because the wave tried to fill some slots with ranged versions of a family that has none and then skipped them. A wave planned for seven could arrive as four. Those slots are now filled from the same family, so every wave arrives at full strength.

Thanks for the feedback!