This release overhauls defense and combat: Active Block lets you raise your shield to stop physical damage, Arcane Barrier adds an Intelligence-aligned recharging health pool that replaces Magic Resist entirely, and Direction Lock keeps your attacks pointed where you aimed them. The raid timer no longer kills you outright — instead, corpses start reanimating as Elite enemies the longer you stay. It also adds 16 new enemy types, smarter boss AI with new boss abilities, and cuts loading times in half.
Added "Direction Lock": a new combat feature preventing your character from changing direction once an attack has started, avoiding accidental turns that cause attacks to miss. Direction Lock can be toggled in the Options menu during its introductory phase (default: on).
Added "Active Block": raise your shield with R2 (gamepad) or Ctrl (keyboard) to prevent incoming physical damage from melee and ranged attacks. Blocking a hit locks out certain actions for a short time, reduceable with the Block Recovery affix on passive skills and equipment. Active Block can be toggled in the Options menu during its introductory phase (default: on).
Added "Arcane Barrier": a new Intelligence-aligned defensive layer providing an extra pool of hit points that recharges over time.
Removed Magic Resist from the game. While resistances are a staple of Action RPGs, they introduce gearing constraints which aren't necessarily fun. Removing Magic Resist on gear means players can experiment with other affixes instead. Magic Damage dealt by enemies has been reduced across the board to compensate.
Reworked the raid timer, which no longer instantly kills the player on completion. Instead, the longer you remain in-raid, the more frequently corpses reanimate as Elite enemies, steadily increasing the danger.
Added 16 new enemy types, spread across the procedurally generated level pools.
Reduced loading times by 50% by optimizing the game's resource preloading procedure.
The HP, damage, speed, hitboxes, collision, animations, and sounds for newly-added enemies will need further tuning; report any issues you come across!
With the sweeping changes to block mechanics and the replacement of Magic Resist with Arcane Barrier, some mechanics and UI elements may still need to be cleaned up.
Increased base block recovery time to 1 second.
The "Magic Immunity" passive skill has been replaced by "Peace of Mind", granting +2% Arcane Barrier per point invested.
The "Adaptivity" passive skill has been replaced by "Energy Flows", granting -4% Arcane Barrier recharge delay per point invested.
The "Stalwart Defender" passive skill now grants 4% Faster Block Recovery per point instead of 2% Block Chance per point.
The "Sharp Wit" passive skill now grants 1% of Mana as Magic Damage per point, down from 3%.
Fixed a bug which could prevent the Teleport or Blink abilities from finding a valid target, or stop them short when an object was in the way.
Fixed a bug which caused movement velocity and knockback velocity to stack additively instead of being sequenced in order.
Each boss now has a preferred style of approaching or avoiding the player instead of always closing distance.
Bosses now detect walls and corners when deciding how to position themselves.
Reworked Severin's Arrow Barrage ability.
Zerakth now has a Pillars of Flame ability.
Camille now has a Scorching Ray ability.
Reduced the damage of Camille's Incinerate ability.
Increased the HP and speed of most Oathbound Chamber enemies.
Reworked Horror of Veynhold's sweep ability.
Added a no-damage grace period to the detonating orbs summoned by the Horror of Veynhold.
Reduced the damage of most Horror of Veynhold abilities, including in Elite mode.
Fixed a bug which caused bosses to lose track of the player mid-fight.
Fixed a bug which could allow bosses to temporarily leave their arenas.
Fixed a bug which caused bosses to appear in the wrong location for one frame.
Fixed a bug which caused Zerakth to take backstab damage while facing the player.
Fixed a bug which could prevent the Oathbound Guardian from playing its death animation.
Throwing axes, throwing knives, and icebolts now have a base damage of 20.
Added per-frame target homing to Shuriken projectiles.
The "Broken Armor" status effect is now called "Crushed".
Rebalanced shrine bonuses and introduced a new healing shrine.
Enemies with shields now have proper block animations, including blocking while walking.
The Archer enemy is now Undead.
Benched the old Pyromancer and Immolated Fiend enemies for now.
Fixed a bug which caused throwing axes and icebolts to have different collision properties than throwing knives.
Fixed a bug which caused flying enemies to get stuck on walls.
Fixed a bug which caused the "Chilled!" text to not appear for melee hits.
Added healing shrines to the rooms following Oathbound Chamber miniboss fights.
Added Arcane Barrier to Intelligence-aligned base types and legendary items.
Replaced all remaining sources of Block Chance with Faster Block Recovery.
Added new visual effects to the Triple Jump ability granted by Conchord's Flight.
Relic of Lightning now hits up to 5 enemies with Chain Lightning (up from 3), with damage reduced from 24 to 20.
Improved item drop animations when opening a chest.
Expanded quest item drops to the new enemy types.
Revised narrative, quest, and item text in several places.
Added Arcane Barrier to the character sheet.
Added explanatory text for shrine buffs to the HUD.
Simplified many passive skill descriptions to use +/- instead of increased/reduced/more/less.
Adjusted font sizes in the Options menu, allowing more entries to appear.
Fixed a bug which caused inconsistent input in the backpack inventory when using a gamepad.
Added missing sound effects to the Severin boss fight, including reworked arrow barrage and galloping audio.