Brimir Update (v1040)
🤝 Companions — Affinity now opens up to "Comradeship"
Affinity earned by fighting alongside your companions was capped at Trust. From this build it opens one tier higher, to Comradeship.
- Each companion gains a new synergy at that tier. Skadi's endurance, Lagertha's blade dance, Alba's elemental binding — each grows one step further along what they already do best
- Dialogue exclusive to that tier opens up as well
🗿 Pilgrim's Trace — it now remains even when you come back alive
Trace was only left behind when a pilgrim fell. A pilgrimage you survived leaving nothing behind never made sense.
- Returning safely from the depths now leaves Trace as well. The deeper you go before turning back, the more remains
- What you leave by falling is unchanged. That price is the whole pilgrim, so it remains far larger
- Shuttling through the shallow floors earns nothing
- The Monument of Legends now explains how Trace accumulates
⚔️ Buffs — your allies' buffs were making your allies weaker
When two buffs of the same kind overlapped, the weaker one was being deleted. A short, strong party buff would wipe out a personal buff that had far longer to run — and the moment the party buff expired, nothing was left. A skill cast to help was leaving the party worse off.
- Losing buffs are now suppressed instead of deleted. When the stronger one ends, the suppressed buff returns for whatever time it had left
- Companions no longer waste casts. If something stronger is already active they hold the skill until it matters — casting stops their attacks, so a buff that contributes nothing was a net loss
🏔 Heart's Threshold — the monsters that were vanishing
- We found the cause of "there are no monsters on floor 7." Nearly half of the placed monsters were failing to spawn and quietly disappearing
- Monster density is now even across all three Heart's Threshold floors. The floor that was most conspicuously empty gains the most
🔥 Scars — The Molten Crucible
- Spirit regeneration was fully sealed. Once you burned through the spirit you brought in, you had no skills at all for the rest of the Scar — only basic attacks. Regeneration is now heavily slowed, but never locked
- The zone name now states what it does to you. Lingering burns, fire vulnerability, reduced spirit regeneration, rapid condition loss — visible before you step in
🛡 Parry and Block — the reaction that went missing
We received reports: "things that should be blocked are getting through," "it doesn't feel crunchy anymore." On inspection, not a single timing window had changed. The flash that burst from your shield on a successful parry had been removed during an effects cleanup — you were blocking, it just no longer looked like it.
- The shield flash on a successful parry is restored.
- Successful blocks now have a confirmation signal too. Until now there was only a sound. It's deliberately smaller and dimmer than the parry — blocking is the fundamental, parrying is the reward for catching a narrow window
🐚 Runes — Primordial Cell (Abyssal Colossus)
- Instead of restoring spirit with every hit, it now builds a barrier. Each time the shell breaks, spirit is burned to reforge it — your spirit is how many times you hold
- Taking Soul Dive from the same rune lets you raise the barrier far more often
🔧 Bug fixes
- Reaper's Seal — equipped on a companion, the spirit from a kill always went to Ragnar instead of the wearer. Only the health restore was routed correctly, which is why it looked like "health fills but spirit never does"
- Softlock when two town prompts overlapped — if the first-companion notice and the return summary appeared at the same moment, neither window would accept input
We put back what needed putting back, and made visible what wasn't.
Blocks you landed without knowing, buffs that helped by making you weaker — those found their place this build.
The pilgrimage to the Heart continues.