A big one. This patch is built around a full combat and stats overhaul, plus a major performance pass that should make the game run noticeably better on every machine.
Performance
Performance overhaul with RAM usage reduced by up to 3 GB and VRAM usage reduced by up to 3 GB.
Lower CPU usage, more stable FPS, and fewer stutters.
Loading speed improved. Game startup on an SSD now takes around 4 seconds instead of 14.
Character prefabs overhauled for better performance. Culling and clipping issues should now be resolved.
Combat and Stats Overhaul
This is the core of the patch. The stat system has been rebuilt from the ground up.
New stat system
Armor and Magic Armor are now flat values instead of percentages. Damage reduction depends on your attacker's level, so the same armor protects less against stronger enemies. Reduction is capped at 75%.
Critical Hit, Dodge, Block, and Haste are now ratings. A fixed amount of rating grants less percent at higher levels, so gear keeps mattering as you level up. Everyone now has a base 5% crit chance.
Attacks now resolve with a single roll that decides Miss, Dodge, Parry, Glancing, Block, or Hit. Blocking no longer negates a hit outright, it removes your Block Value from the damage instead.
New stats
Agility. Grants armor, critical hit chance, and dodge chance. Found on leather gear as a primary stat and plate gear as a secondary.
Stamina. Grants 10 Health per point. Replaces flat Health on all gear.
Parry. A new avoidance rating found on plate gear.
Defense. Raises your defense skill above the base. Skill above your attacker's level grants a little dodge, parry, block, and chance to be missed, and reduces the chance you are critically hit.
Block Value. The damage removed when you block. Found on all shields, and Strength adds to it as well.
Haste. Reduces the time between auto attacks. Attack speed cannot drop below 0.8 seconds.
Renamed stats
The sprint and block resource Stamina is now called Endurance, with Endurance Regen.
Health Regen is now called Spirit.
Weapons and Gear
Every weapon now has an Attack Speed between 1.5 and 5.0 seconds that drives your auto attacks. Tooltips show damage range, speed, and DPS.
Weapon damage rebalanced along a DPS curve, from around 2 DPS at level 1 up to 40 or more near level 30, and higher for rarer items.
All equipment converted to the new system. Armor values, ratings, and Stamina are scaled to each item's level and rarity.
Item Power now shows in gold at the top of every tooltip.
Enchantments updated to match the new system. For example, Ironhide now grants flat armor and Vitality grants Stamina.
137 new armor items added that can drop in the world: 112 armor pieces and 25 pieces of jewelry (15 rings and 10 necklaces).
8 new enchanting scrolls added.
39 new weapons and capes added: 6 one handed axes, 6 one handed swords, 6 staffs, 6 daggers, 5 shields, and 10 capes.
Fixed the visuals for enchanted weapons so they now display correctly.
Enemies
All hostile NPCs now have level appropriate armor and magic armor. Casters resist magic but wear little armor, while elites and bosses are tougher across the board.
Higher level enemies naturally avoid more of your attacks and crit you more often. Pulling above your level is dangerous again.
Classes
Added 4 new bonuses to the Necromancer's Necromancy talent tree that modify pet stats.
UI and Quality of Life
Added skin tone options in character creation.
Merchant window reworked with a buyback tab and a clearer view of what the merchant is selling.
Stat sheet improvements. Hover any stat in the character panel for a description along with live numbers. Armor shows your actual damage reduction, Haste shows your actual attack speed bonus, and hovered stats highlight in red.
The Unstuck button now simply teleports you to the nearest graveyard.
Fixes
Fixed a bug where settings would not be applied when restarting the game.
Quality check and rewrite pass on some localization, which should make several translations clearer.
Various other minor bugs and fixes.
Dev Note
Many of the tools I need to grow the game content wise are now finished, which means the next patch will be a large content patch. The plan for it includes 3 new dungeons, 6 new challenge stones, between 40 and 50 new quests, the Druid class, and a new playable race, the Orc.
The goal for the next patch is to finish out the content in the current areas, and then expand south into a new region that will be as large as Coalway Woods is now.
I am happy for all the support and feedback that helps make the game better.