Warriors!
We have heard your feedback, went through the messages and reports you sent us and today, we bring you a new update! It shall make your adventures in Gwern more pleasurable and also bountiful. We introduced some key quality of life improvements and changes, but keep in mind, the journey of Kromlech is still in its first steps and more crucial updates will come at a steady pace. Our team is already working on the next update, but for now, let’s focus on today’s news!
We have completely redone the loading system, which helped us to drastically reduce loading times, both while loading the game from the menu or while entering dungeons, but also while sleeping, fast traveling or, unfortunately, dying. The improvement is significant, but we are still working on delivering even shorter loading times in future updates.. Long waits are over, get back into the fray!
We have already introduced a tutorial in our previous update, but this time, we also added useful hints to loading screens, added height indicators to quest markers, so you’ll know if your target is above or bellow ground, and also added visual and aural indicators of getting hit and getting low on health or stamina. We believe this change makes combat more understandable and enjoyable.
The guard/block system of shields and weapons has been redone. Shields and weapons are now draining stamina based on their weight. Shields now have a new parameter called Absorption which reduces the incoming damage potential and redirects it into stamina.
Yes, our mighty hero was running as if the hounds of the underworld were at his heels. All movesets now have reduced speed, we also disabled sprint while Cronach is overencumbered. To make your encounters with tough enemies fair, we also prolonged the invincibility frame during dodging.
That pesky lock-on dot should work as intended now! The system is now more reliable and we also fixed related bugs, i.e. inability to lock on an enemy or disappearance of the lock-on dot.
We managed to reduce the size of Kromlech by approx. 10 GB, but we’re not stopping there! A more significant reduction is coming in future updates.
Combat & Movement:
Reduced player movement speed by 20% across all movesets
Increased invincibility frame duration during dodge
Reworked block logic for shields and weapons — shields and weapons now drain stamina based on weight; new Absorption parameter reduces incoming damage and redirects it to stamina; weapon block damage reduced from 50% to 10%
Sprint now automatically resets after stopping
Sprint disabled while over-encumbered
Improved player lock-on targeting system
Fixed horizontal slash aiming while locked on
Fixed player attack aiming against animals — player now correctly adjusts slash height when fighting on slopes or stairs, instead of slashing straight ahead regardless of elevation difference
Adjusted timing of heal within the heal animation (heal occurs earlier)
Reduced Marauder collider thickness (better player reach during attacks)
Fixed camera movement during death
Balancing:
Reduced enemy difficulty in early game — mainly wolves and bandits
Significantly increased Stability for mid/late game enemies (undead warriors, kings, lurgs, elite lurgs)
Increased base damage for lurgs
Increased enemy difficulty in High Risk zones; improved elite enemies — boosted stats, unique appearances, dedicated armor
Weapon balancing — Tier 2 and higher weapons weakened, stats reduced
Rebalanced stability for most armor (reduced previously left-in testing values)
Rebalanced shields following the new Absorption system
Limited drops from higher tier chests to max 3 items (protection against loot overflow)
Adjusted loot in bandit camps — Tier 2 weapons drop earlier
Significantly increased loot drop chance from enemies
Increased drop chance for oil and carnyx parts (added to more loot tables)
Fixed and adjusted loot quality in chests across the world
Fixed incorrect loot tables in some dungeons
Vendors (including Boastus) now have a modifier limiting max damage from a single hit to 30% of their HP — no more accidentally one-shotting the blacksmith
Adjusted Avenger skill tree — added mastery nodes for encumbrance modification
Game Content:
Haven: added functional blacksmith and haven guard
Lettrek: added Beitorax's elite guard
Lettrek: chest in chieftain hut now locked behind guardians
Lettrek: expanded setup with patrol base and patrol at the cave entrance
Bandits: added new Celt warrior variant with different gear (working name "Berserker")
Adjusted interaction position at resource nodes
Added kill zones and blocking colliders in dungeons
Adjustments to starting zone setups — enabled chests, fixed wandering merchant tables
Added new encounters, chests, resource nodes, and spawn tuning across the world
Fixed shortcuts in Lettrek and Natuhuk areas
Fixed Lurg egg destruction
Added notification for shortcuts guarded by enemies
Added minor loot and props to tombs and underground areas
Fixed navmeshes (NPC movement)
Endurance now correctly resets after sleeping
Quests:
Fixed prisoner rope-cutting interaction in captured outposts
Fate Points removed from quests (fixing Q1 Warm Welcome and Q2 Names of Renown exploit)
Fix Q30 (Crisis C4) — quest was stuck at the beginning
Fix Q38 (Crisis C12) — incorrect counter in description
Fix Q41 — quest stuck at the beginning
Fix Q29 — fixed edge cases in quest progression
Fix Hostile Hospitality — innkeeper can be interacted with after being rescued
Attacking spectators in Prasohlav's arena no longer turns the gate garrison hostile
Fixed Elioth's camp spawning in Newcomers crisis
Fixed conflicting events in one of the dungeons
Fixed positions of some crisis quest locations for better compass navigation
Quest Regicide navigation now points to the correct dungeon
Added navigation for quest Warm Welcome — after visiting Lughas's shrine, player is guided to the Kaeldwern gate
Adjusted tracking for quest Big Trouble, Little Lettrek — quest temporarily points only to Gersel's position; simultaneous navigation to both brothers is not yet technically possible and will be addressed in a future update
Card detail texts reworked to rich text (styles, icons, etc. now work properly)
Fixed inconsistent UI textures (padding, dividers)
Changed "Tracked" icon in map and journal
Redesigned collection lists (quests, deeds, fireplaces…) — unified layout and improved readability
Updated Kromlech logo in menu + added Early Access badge
Added directional arrows to compass for better orientation when tracking quests
Fixed Ritual Site screen (unified slots)
Repositioned "Crises" and "Masteries" in booklet submenu for better usability
New loading screen with gameplay hints (20+ hints, more to come)
Fixed duplicate Barrow Armor entry in crafting menu
Fixed empty warpaint detail (removed temp text)
Fixed input icons disappearing from HUD after leaving booklet
Fixed blurred background in screens
Fixed Heat bar not updating on hit
Fixed crash when pressing I
Visually smoothed stamina drain (smaller value jumps)
Localization:
Fixed numerous typos and localization issues in quests
Added translations and fixed existing localizations in Settings menu
Renamed antennae swords — two items shared the same name, now distinguished
Rift audio — rift entrance, ambient balancing inside rift, rift heart destruction
Fixed bush sounds not playing on contact with characters
Fixed interior volumes in caves, fixed audio bleed from outdoor areas
Added missing ambient audio to Mine2
Added Bloodthirst curse audio
Added player vocal reactions on hit (pain sounds) and on dodge
Added low HP audio indicator
Fixed audio muffling when returning from inventory and craft/trade screens
Balanced notification audio mix in combat
Fixed incorrect music theme in Haven
Added SFX for quest notifications (quest started, completed, failed)
Fixed random muting of all sounds after loading
Unified death audio across systems
Smoothed atmospheric audio transition into/out of caves
Improved waterfall visuals
Fixed lighting and fog across dungeons (added lighting to areas with absolute darkness)
Updated interior lighting — visual improvements + fixed glowing groom
Improved lighting transitions between interiors and exteriors
Fixed colliders, sealed gaps, fixed misaligned models, hidden see-through rocks, overlapping and floating meshes
Fixed hair thickness across hair sets
Reworked reload system within a single map (soft loading) — day progression, fast travel, rest, and new cycles no longer require a full map reload, only replacing things that are no longer relevant. Significantly speeds up in-map transitions.
Optimized textures, compression, and model sizes (reduced invalid UVs, improved compression)
Optimized spruce trees and ground plants (texture reduction, topology, rendering speed)
Linked NPC computation to view distance setting — improved performance on low/medium
Optimized rendering in tutorial level
Parallelized navmesh computation during loading
Optimized groom rendering (reduced VRAM usage, sky lighting rendering)
Optimized per-character physics computation — approximately 1/3 performance improvement per character
Optimized GPU buffers → ~300 MB VRAM savings
Reduced UI texture data sizes
Removed unnecessary log files from save folder (fixed excessive folder size)
Fixed controls dropping out
Fixed performance issues near wolves and lurgs