Hello everyone!
This update is focused almost entirely on combat — how much damage you take, how long your abilities actually last, and how your skills interact with an enemy's turn. There are also a number of interface and reliability fixes along the way.
This change list is quite a bit heavier than normal. Several changes required other systems to change with them, and things snowballed from there! There’s an itemized summary first, with the full details further down, so you can decide how much you want to read.
Thank you to everyone who has reported difficulty problems, sent suggestions, or simply told me when a fight felt wrong. Several of the largest changes here came directly from those reports.
The Changes
Combat
Enemies now attack twice per round instead of once.
A single enemy can no longer take more than 75% of your maximum health in one round, at any level. Elites cap at 85%, bosses at 55%.
Skill stuns now last their full stated duration.
A cast or item that is refused no longer uses one of your two actions for the round.
An attack that is fully absorbed now says the blow glanced off instead of reporting zero damage.
Earth and Wind
Two new elements that change the flow of a turn rather than simply changing how much damage lands.
Earth takes one of an enemy's two attacks away. Wind gives you an extra strike.
Seven skills across five classes now carry one of them.
Gale Wrath finally does what it always said it did.
Whispering Woods
Enemies at player levels 1 through 4 are no longer stronger than the player.
Enemies now show, and pay, the level they actually fight at.
Oakhaven
Elder Kenneth has taken a second job. He now keeps a permanent post in the Town Square.
New and low-level characters can ask him for a blessing that reduces incoming damage.
The World
Enemies now roam between rooms.
Interface & Reliability
Item commands and inventory buttons now always act on the exact item you chose.
The inventory window and sidebar no longer fall out of sync, and the inventory list no longer swallows clicks.
The Player Guide's navigation buttons now fit on smaller displays.
Several skill and zone names now read correctly in both languages.
Combat
Enemies attack twice per round
One of the recurring pieces of feedback has been that combat is too easy, and that there often isn't enough reason to use your skills instead of simply attacking. This is one part of addressing that.
Enemies now have two attacks per round instead of one. Each attack is weaker than the old single attack, but normal and elite enemies will deal more damage overall if both land. Normal and elite enemies attack at 75% strength per hit, while bosses attack at 50% per hit — so a boss's total damage is unchanged, but it now arrives in two pieces.
More importantly, this gives an enemy's turn some actual structure. With one attack, there isn't much room to interrupt, remove, or trade against part of that turn: the attack either happens or it doesn't. With two, Earth can take away half of an enemy's offense without becoming another full stun, and future mechanics can interact with individual pieces of a turn.
This is also groundwork for Hero combat, including charged abilities that enemies will eventually be able to interrupt.
A stun, a wind-up, and a rescue-focused boss still take an enemy's entire turn.
Also changed by this:
Armour wears roughly twice as fast, since each attack rolls wear separately.
Mage Focus, which rewards a round where you take no damage, will now trigger less often.
A heavily armoured character who used to take 1 damage per round will now take 2, since each attack still lands for at least 1.
I expect this to need some tuning once players have spent time with it. I'll be watching feedback in the short term, with a broader balance pass once the Hero update is in players' hands.
The damage cap now applies at every level
A single enemy can no longer take more than 75% of your maximum health in one round. Elites cap at 85% and bosses at 55%. This was already true of bosses and very high-level enemies, but it now applies from level 1 upward.
The cap is a budget shared by both of an enemy's attacks, not a separate limit on each one.
What this removes is the round where a healthy character simply dies with no chance to react. At level 100, an Enraged elite could previously end a full-health fight in a single round more often than not. It no longer can.
This changes nothing at levels 1 through 10, where enemy damage never reached the cap in the first place.
Skill stuns now last their full duration
Fixed: a skill that stunned for 1 round would print the stun message and then let the enemy attack anyway. A 2-round stun skipped one attack, and a 3-round stun skipped two.
Stuns from weapons and companions were never affected. This was specific to stuns applied by casting a skill, and it affected 27 skills — including Lullaby and Snareline, which new characters can reach at level 3.
Refused actions are free
Fixed: a cast refused for insufficient mana, a spell swallowed by a Silent Sanctum, or a potion that could not be used still consumed one of your two actions.
That could leave you unable to act for the rest of the round, or end your turn outright in turn-based mode. A refused action now remains exactly that: refused. It does not cost you an action.
Absorbed hits read correctly
When an attack lands but is completely stopped — by the damage cap or by a blessing — the log now says the blow glanced off rather than reporting a hit for zero damage.
The line still appears, so you can still see that an attack was made and stopped.
Earth and Wind
These are the largest new additions in this update, and they work differently from every element that came before them.
Fire, Frost, Lightning, Holy and Shadow all change how much damage lands, or what that damage leaves behind.
Earth and Wind change what happens during the turn itself.
They are the first elements in Portalborn built around action economy rather than damage.
Earth takes an attack away from the enemy
Land an Earth skill and the target loses one of its two attacks for the round.
You are told when Earth takes hold, and again when the attack is actually lost, along with how many attacks the enemy still has remaining.
Because Earth waits for an attack the enemy would actually make, it also survives through a stun. If you stun a target and apply Earth, the stun plays out first. Earth then removes an attack the next time the enemy is actually able to swing.
Skill
Class
Level
Skybreaker Drop
Warrior
56
Reckoner's Hammer
Paladin
49
Treant March
Druid
84
Earth has two limits, and both are deliberate.
Only one Earth application can take hold on a target per round. A second will tell you that the earth already has its grip and finds no purchase.
An enemy also cannot lose more than one attack in a single round, no matter how many Earth effects are waiting.
Without those limits, stacking Earth while a target was stunned could strip away the enemy's entire turn the moment it recovered. At that point Earth would effectively become another stun rather than partial denial.
As it stands, Earth removes half of an enemy's normal output while still leaving something coming back at you. It also gives you a reason to use one Earth skill and then do something else rather than simply casting Earth twice.
Wind buys you an attack
Land a Wind skill and your next ordinary attack strikes one extra time.
You are told when the wind takes hold, and again when the extra strike lands.
Skill
Class
Level
Scatterflight
Ranger
16
Arrowburst
Ranger
42
Midnight Waltz
Rogue
100
Gale Wrath
Druid
49
Gale Wrath already carried Wind but never actually did anything with it.
It does now.
How they are handed out
Earth sits primarily on the heavy, grounded classes. Wind belongs to the fast ones. Druid is currently the only class with access to both.
Only a damaging skill or spell hit can apply either effect. Ordinary attacks cannot.
A self-feeding loop where attacking earns you more attacks is not a mechanic. It is a bug waiting to happen.
Skills that already carry Fire, Frost, Lightning, Holy or Shadow have been left alone. Replacing their existing reactions and identity just to give them a tempo effect would be a poor trade.
Very cheap low-level skills were also avoided deliberately. A spammable Earth skill would become a lockout limited mostly by the size of your mana bar.
Damage, cost, stun length, critical behaviour, execute thresholds and skill names are all unchanged. Only the element has changed.
One known issue with the descriptions. Five of these six skills currently list both their new element and "physical damage" in their description text. The element is correct and working — the leftover "physical damage" line is not. The skills behave exactly as described above; only the text is wrong. A fix is going out in roughly 24 hours.
Two things to know before you rebuild around this
These six skills no longer shatter Frost themselves.
They were previously physical, and physical damage shatters a Frost mark. As Earth and Wind skills, they no longer do so.
Your ordinary attack during the round can still shatter Frost, so the reaction has not disappeared — it simply comes from a different source.
This will mainly matter for Mage multiclass builds, with Midnight Waltz seeing the largest change.
Gale Wrath no longer leaves a "Windflayed" mark.
A Frost or Fire mark already sitting on the enemy will now survive Gale Wrath instead of being overwritten.
Still to come
There are two obvious gaps in this list, and they're mine to fill.
Bard is the tempo class, but its current speed skill is a buff. Nothing it casts can actually carry Wind, so Bard needs a damaging song that can.
Rogue, meanwhile, does not see Wind until level 100, which is far too late for a class built around speed.
Both will be addressed.
Whispering Woods
Enemies at levels 1 through 4
Whispering Woods was the only portal in the game where a brand-new character could immediately meet enemies stronger than themselves.
A level 1 character was fighting enemies built at level 5: 260 health and 52 attack, compared with the 20 attack of an actual level 1 enemy.
That was far too aggressive for someone's first portal.
Inside Whispering Woods' level range, enemies now resolve at the lower of your level and the range midpoint.
Levels 1 through 4 become considerably easier. Levels 5 through 8 are unchanged.
Nobody gets a harder Whispering Woods from this change.
This adjustment is specific to Whispering Woods, deliberately. Every other portal already scales down to the player's level.
Enemies show and pay the level they fight at
Once Whispering Woods started correctly giving a level 1 player a level 1 enemy, another mismatch became obvious: the enemy was still showing the room's level and paying level 5 experience.
The rewards and display have now been brought in line with the fight itself.
This does mean less experience at the very beginning.
A normal kill at level 1 now pays 45 experience instead of 145. Gnarltongue pays 203 instead of 653.
At levels 2 through 4 those figures rise toward the old numbers, and from level 5 onward nothing has changed.
In practice, this works out to roughly 1.44 times as many kills to reach level 5.
The fights are considerably easier and the levelling is somewhat slower. I would rather the numbers you see accurately represent the fight you're having, and I'll be watching how the early game feels with both changes in place.
Oakhaven
Elder Kenneth has taken a second job
Elder Kenneth, who has been asking for a promotion since July, has instead been given a second post.
He now keeps a permanent station in the Town Square alongside his loft.
He is also the first character to properly respond to spoken keywords, which is groundwork for quite a bit more to come.
Elder Kenneth's blessing
New and low-level characters can now ask Elder Kenneth for a blessing that reduces the damage they take.
Type talk elder_kenneth and he will offer the blessing.
It reduces incoming enemy attacks by 75% at levels 1 through 6, 70% at levels 7 and 8, and 50% at levels 9 and 10.
It ends at level 11, and Kenneth will tell you when it weakens and when it expires.
You can decline the blessing, or take it back later, by saying the phrase he gives you. If you decline it, he will stop offering.
This is intended for someone genuinely new to this kind of game.
A player with experience in the genre will probably be fine without it, but someone walking east into their first portal can use an edge, and Kenneth seems like the right person to give it.
The blessing does not reduce environmental hazard damage, damage from a failed flee, or a Blood Altar sacrifice.
The World
Enemies roam
Enemies can now relocate between rooms.
On average, roughly one enemy movement occurs for every thirty moves you make. If you are standing in the room an enemy leaves or enters, you will see it happen.
Roaming enemies will not attack you immediately when they arrive, and they will not join a fight already in progress.
That is deliberate for now.
Interface & Reliability
Fixed:
Item commands could act on the wrong item when two items had near-identical internal names. This affected dismantle, sell, market, deposit, withdraw, use, equip, unequip, lock, compare and buy, along with the Sell, List and Unequip buttons.
The inventory window and sidebar could fall out of sync after a change.
The inventory list could swallow a click intended for a button beneath it.
The Player Guide's navigation buttons could run past the edge of the window on smaller displays, making Portals and Pets unclickable at 1280x720.
English skill descriptions began with a lowercase sentence after a full stop on 88 skills.
Dread Catacombs showed two different Chinese names depending on where you looked.
Several custom-class skill names were incorrect in Chinese.
Saying certain short, ordinary words in the Portal Chamber could send you somewhere you did not intend to go.
Known, not yet fixed: five of the newly-elemented skills still show "physical damage" in their description alongside their new element. Behaviour is correct; the text is not. Patching within about 24 hours.
Looking Ahead
A fair amount of this update was originally built for the Hero layer.
It is in your hands now instead of sitting behind the larger update for months.
That is deliberate.
When a piece of Hero groundwork is useful to the existing game on its own, I would rather ship it as soon as it works than hold it back until it can arrive bundled with content you may not even reach for a while.
That means the base game continues improving while the larger work continues, and it also means these systems get tested through real play long before the Hero layer depends on them.
What that looks like in this patch:
An enemy's turn now has structure. Two attacks instead of one creates room for interruption, denial and trading — including enemies eventually being able to break a Hero's charged abilities.
The element system is being built for Hero skills. Elements and their reactions were designed to give Hero abilities more to interact with. Earth and Wind are the newest additions, and the first elements built around changing the flow of a turn rather than simply changing damage. Seven base-game skills use them today.
The damage cap is now a per-round budget. It needed to apply across an enemy's entire turn rather than independently to each swing. That keeps the same protection intact even as turns become more complicated.
Enemies roam. The system arrives quietly for now, without immediate aggression, so it becomes part of the world before more complicated behaviour is built on top of it.
Elder Kenneth responds to spoken keywords. The system behind that behaviour is general, not specific to Kenneth. Characters can eventually use it to hand out items, information, effects and other responses based on what you actually say to them.
None of these are placeholders, and none of them are going to be replaced.
They are Portalborn systems, and the Hero layer is being built on top of the same ones you are playing with right now.
Thank you all, genuinely.
The difficulty changes in this update exist because players told me fights felt too easy and that skills did not feel meaningful enough to use.
The Whispering Woods changes exist because the early game was harder than it had any right to be.
I read everything that gets posted, and a great deal of it eventually ends up here.
There is a lot more coming.