Hello everyone!
A New Consumable: Attunement Stones
Finding a piece of gear with exactly the stat spread you want, only to outlevel it an hour later, has always been a small tragedy.
Attunement Stones are meant to fix that.
Using one raises a piece of equipment to your current level. Its stats scale proportionally, preserving the roll quality and stat spread that made the item worth keeping—the numbers simply grow to match its new level.
Everything you've already invested stays. Alchemy infusions, Portal Imprints, Primordial Cores, and enhancements from Grand Enchanter Vaelin are all retained exactly as they were.
Attunement Stones were already planned as part of the upcoming Hero equipment system. A player on Discord recently asked whether there was currently any way to bring a favorite lower-level item up to their present level. Since most of the underlying infrastructure was already being built for Hero gear, I spent a couple of extra hours separating that functionality out and making it available now rather than waiting for the larger Hero Class update.
Attunement Stones are used through the Alchemy Station like any other component, and they can be used from anywhere—you don't need to return to town. Before anything is applied, you'll see a confirmation showing the item's current level and what it will become.
Where to find them:
Alfred stocks one at a time. The price scales with your level.
Any boss has a small chance to drop one.
One important distinction: Attunement Stones raise an item's level, not its quality. A poorly rolled item stays poorly rolled, and there will always be a better drop waiting somewhere. This simply means that when you do find something special, it can come with you.
Other Changes
While building the summoned companion portion of Hero Classes, I unavoidably had to touch some of Portalborn's existing live companion code. For now, this will have very little noticeable effect—companions currently exist only as NPCs under limited circumstances—but a few improvements to the underlying system are already live.
Companions now attack the enemy you're currently targeting. Previously, they remained focused on the first enemy you engaged even after you switched targets. This primarily matters in multi-enemy rooms, which are still uncommon outside Celestial Rift.
Companion persistence has also been improved. Companions could permanently disappear when entering secret areas such as labyrinths or loot vaults. They now wait behind and rejoin you when you return. Companions can also no longer incorrectly carry over to a different character after a reset.
These changes are mostly groundwork for now, but they make the existing behavior more reliable while I continue building the much larger companion systems needed for Hero Classes.
Thank you all, as always—and thank you to the player whose question brought Attunement Stones out of the Hero roadmap and into the game a little early.
— TheHand