Practice, Guide, and Magic | Summer 2026 Update

This update brings over 200+ changes and improvements to the game. We’re building on the Spring update and putting the game in a better state for later 2026 content. Flying speed has been increased btw.

Please read below for the full list of new things!
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Practice mode

Practice mode is a dedicated space that allows you to test & learn the game. There’s a tools menu that let’s you add bots, reset health, try out every perk, magic, and ability, and more. This will likely be expanded in many ways later on, so if you have any feedback please share. New players will be recommended to spend some time in Practice. Minutes spent in practice will also be a new stat, and after spending your first 5 minutes there, you’ll earn a bonus 1,500 Material for doing so.

Guide

Skyfear’s in-game “How to play” menu has gotten a full refresh, with newer and better descriptions, easier to read, more images, and renamed to “Guide”. The Guide can be accessed from the Pause menu now, and Main Menu, and in the middle of gameplay, by pressing F1 or clicking a button on the screen for it if present. By making the Guide accessible anywhere, it should be an aid for you while you’re playing, whether you’re new or not. Also, most pages in the Guide now also have bonus Material that you can claim simply by clicking on them.

Whether you are new or played since launch, I highly recommend going through the Guide and Practice mode on your next play. You may get a better understanding of the game’s mechanics and have a better time if you struggled before.

Tracers

Another new thing in the interest of helping you learn is projectile tracers. This is a visual effect that will follow the trail of your bolts, to show you how their physics and homing works. These can be turned on or off in Options menu, but by default they will be visible in Practice mode only.

Notable Changes (There's a lot)

Gameplay, Magic, Combat:

• When spawning in Lairworld, overall speed is slightly increased
• Max accelleration on ground changed to 2048, from 512
• Max accelleration in air changed to 4096, from 5625
• Max flying speed increased from 1400 to 1900
• Max flying speed when dashing increased from 3000 to 3900
• Re-arranged Ability unlock order: now Death Rune, Bloodsight, Cloak, then Shroud
• Significantly reduced magic cost of sprays (all magic types)
• Improved magic properties tooltips
• Refactored and improved how magic properties ratings bars work
• Bolts will now use a fixed damage instead of a range based on a curve by distance, as this mechanic was very unreliable
• Lowered the damage of bolt attacks (all magic types) by almost half
• Lowered the magic cost bolt attacks (all magic types) by almost half
• Ghost perk now affects footsteps, as it always should have
• Refactored Ghost’s implimentation of making character movement quieter
• Sensitivity when dashing reduced from 33% to 22%
• Changed melee to 375 damage, from 500
• Fusion rate of fire reduced slightly
• All camera shaking reduced by about 30%
• Removed X and Z location from firing camera shakes, and all rotation but roll, preventing camera shake from impacting aim
• Hitboxes of players expanded very slightly in all directions
• Increased homing accelleration from 60% to 200% -- This will undergo further changes later
• Adjusted enemy target trace radius from 340 to 360
• Increase radius of all magic type bolts
• Updated/improved procedural firing animation to be easier on the eyes
• Attached roar particle effects to head instead of body
• Slightly improved roar particle effects visibility
• Slightly reduced intensity of procedural jaw animation on roar
• Added camera roll to look axis when on ground (can be tuned down with existing camera tilt intensity option)
• Verified certain gamepad bindings were not failing – Steam Input should be working fine
• Added slightly flashing particle effect to pickups orbs respawning

Fixes/Bugs:

• Fixed an issue where Loadout screen button selection with Keyboard would bring you to the incorrect menu
• Fixed various edge case issues with selecting “Back” on Pause menu
• Removed an out of date degeneration timer was causing magic to deplete additional values when spraying and shooting bolts, which was not intended
• Fixed an issue where loadout changes in the Main Menu didn’t apply to your Lairworld visits
• Removed the small delay on spray starting up. Spray attacks are now instant.
• Removed an out of date map-range clamp placement was causing Spray rate of fire and drain to be clamped to out of date values
• Fixed an issue where Ghost perk’s effects would not be removed from a character sometimes
• Fixed some issues with footsteps, jumping and landing sounds, and improved sound mixing
• Take flight check now ignores invisible navigation actors placed in maps, resolving an issue where sometimes taking flight would be prevented seemingly for no reason
• Fixed chat being placed beneath some widget layers, making it unreadable through some menus
• Fixed various issues with shadows on some UX elements
• Fixed an issue with Material gain widget/animation
• Fixed an issue or two with mouse collisions on some Main Menu elements
• Fixed an issue where leaving session would fail sometimes
• Changed flight camera setting to “Right” by default when reset with the Reset to defaults option, previously was not the same as Config’s actual default
• Fixed reseting interface settings to default set Friendly color to an unknown blueish color; it is now one of the official colors, “Leaf Green”
• Fixed some menu 2D assets not covering bottom of Main Menu screen
• Fixed an issue where selecting Air / Ground spawn choice would be ignored and mostly always spawn you in the air
• Fixed an issue where pressing ESC on Code of Conduct menu removes the contents but not the menu
• Adjusted position of map and game mode details underneath map image on game setup, was not centered for some reason

Changed:

• Improved LOD configuration and shading issues on Wintertide’s snow piles
• Reworded entire Basic Controls / Help widget to be simpler and more reflect its new implimentation
• Changed Basic Controls / Help widget to have the same visibility bevahior as projectile tracers
• Removed “Grid” map from map list
• Renamed “CHARGE” on HUD to “ABILITY”
• Renamed several settings under Interface category, for clarity
• Re-arranged a couple of Main Menu buttons to put Practice and Guide together
  Improved visibility on input feed widgets
• Shortened overall lifespan of chat messages, game feed messages 10s, player messages 20s, down from all at 30s
• Suggested servers now only update after fixed 5 minutes since last refresh, avoids server browser looking very random
• Reduced total number of suggested servers
• Online player count request/functions given more leniency
• Session names will now default to “yourplayername’s Game”
• Match feed contents are now being sent through the game chat feed
• Spawns have been removed from the match feed, not needed
• Adjusted font size and window size of game chat/feed
• Match feed turned off (now just one game chat/feed)
• Turned off chat notification sounds, probably not necessary
• Adjusted positions of performance stat and looking for players widgets
• Renamed “Game” to “Mode” on server browser categories
• Adjusted styling of some buttons to accommodate new & future changes
• Removed/changed some animation on buttons due to hitbox issues it causes
• Improved points/kill confirm UI animation and contents clarity
• Set description of suggested servers with “This is an example listing. Joining this server will create this server with you as host.”
• Renamed “Message…” to “Find Players”
• Renamed “Create Server” to “Host Game”, more in line with what players expect from client-server MP games
• Adjusted server suggestion generation balance and details logic
• Updated/improved player count logic on server browser

Added:

• Added “Low Magic” indicator on HUD that appears when magic is considered too low for effective action
• Created a dragon “effort” sound cue, that plays occasionally when doing physical things like landing and cancelling dashing
• Added new guide page: Customization
• Added new guide page: Practice
• Added new guide page: Bolt attack
• Added new guide page: Spray attack
• Increased geyser speed boost effect slightly
• Increased spore count per level up algo
• Updated guide pages with latest info + added images
• Added Show Tracers option to config and settings menu, with three options: Off, Training Only,
• Always, default to Training Only
• Leaderboard entry of the client user now highlights gold, the rest are more transparent
• Added Guide keybinding to Pause, Main Menu, and when in battle
• Added lots of new loading screen tips related to the latest game additions/changes
• Added “Recommendation” notifications to Guide and Practice buttons on main menu
• Added practice minutes stat to stat screen
• Added new stat: Minutes spent in practice mode
• Updated Protoria Studios intro logo assets
• Added “Last login” (days) to Leaderboard
• Added a button to launch straight into a Practice mode session on the Guide menu
• Added “total” next next to post game material earnings total count, making it just a bit more clear what that number is
• Added the definitive Spore icon next to the number of new spores provided on the Lairworld button in Main Menu
• Added more to the Quit message for Host players: “players looking to play may no longer have a server to join! Are you sure?”
• Added cursor animation when focusing game chat
• Added recent death indicator on player deaths
• Added match feed message to listing out your loadout when you spawn
• Added little green ‘light’ icon next to network status indicating connection confirmed or not
• Added status property to servers, defaulted to “waiting for players”

See the full commit log here.

What’s next?

(in the next 2-3 updates)

• New magic types. Several new magic types have been in design and development for some time now, but some changes were needed under the hood to bring them in. This update takes care of most of it, so one of the next couple updates will bring new magic types.
• Single player challenges. Working on a feature where the game gives you single player challenges to complete daily, with bonus rewards that may include cosmetics. About half of this is done and being tested internally.
• New maps. There’s plenty of half-finished maps I could finish and add. Currently just need to settle on which ones, and how often there should be new maps.
• UI polish, consistency, and better support for ultra-wide or rare screen sizes.
• New cosmetics and cosmetic types.
• Dragon model & animation. Since a lot of people are asking about this: The model & animation are handled outside of the game’s editor/source code, it’s almost a separate project. It will be implimented as a replacement for the current model once it’s done. So it is being developed alongside the game updates. That is why you’re getting updates like this where the dragon model doesn’t appear much different. I’m estimating it will be ready at least 2-3 updates down the road. I plan on making a separate blog post + video highlighting the latest on this very soon.

Feedback

Please keep the feedback coming! I won’t stop working on this game until it’s awesome for as many of you as possible. Right now the servers may be a bit quiet, but that’s largely due to the regional and time zone spread. Long-term support was always the approach – eventually the population will solidify. Let’s stick with it!

See ya in the arenas,
telekrex (lead dev)