The Workshop and inventory management are rebuilt for parties of up to four eternals. Trees no longer block your view of creatures. Larger parties get a fairer balance pass, Ara gets a new upgrade, and the graphics options have grown.
Party inventory
- The hub has a new layout with a party rail on the left, one button per eternal. It replaces the F1-F4 strip.
- The Workshop is rebuilt with three panes: your party's items, the Forge and Salvage. Forge and Salvage are tabs at the top.
- In a solo party you can forge and salvage with items from every eternal at once. Each recipe row shows what you are missing and who receives the result.
- Wildcard ingredients are marked, with a note on which items they accept.
- Before the Forge unlocks, it shows greyed out with a lock and "Unlocks after Chapter 4". That helps you decide early on whether to salvage something.
- New Inventory tab in the lobby for solo parties with two or more eternals. Move items between eternals, or send a stack to the next one.
- In a level, give an item to an adjacent ally. Drop it on their portrait, or pick Give in the radial wheel. It is free, but both of you must be on your own turn and standing still. Relics and familiars cannot be given.
- In online co-op, you can gift items to a teammate under the same rules, in a level or from the lobby.
- The victory screen lists items that were left behind because no inventory had room.
- Relic sockets are round and have a bronze ring.
- Skill points and the reset button sit under the skill tree tabs. Exit Game, feedback and the chat button now sit in the same place in every mode.
Trees and graphics
- Trees that block your view of a nearby creature now open a soft hole around it, so you can see it. Trees beside or behind creatures stay put. Thanks to the Steam player who asked for this.
- New Settings > Interface option, Fade Trees in Front of Creatures. Turn it on to fade those trees out completely instead of cutting a hole. Only creatures within 5 cells of where the camera is looking get a hole.
- Grass and foliage no longer pop in only a couple of hexes from the camera on every graphics level, and their shadows no longer cut off in an oval. Thanks to the Steam player who reported it.
- New Video options: Foliage Distance, Foliage Density, Tree Distance, Shadow Quality, Anti-Aliasing (Off, SMAA, MSAA 4x), Render Scale, Ambient Occlusion, Distance Fog and Depth of Field. Each is Auto by default and shows what Auto picks for your graphics level.
- New Epic graphics level. High and Ultra now render at full resolution.
- Ultra and Epic have a new Max tree distance.
- New Distance Fog option, on by default for High, Ultra and Epic from level 3. It is a soft haze at the horizon.
- Level 3 no longer shows a hard beige band under the horizon. The distance now fades into the sky.
- Level 6 and 7 hills and other large props now change detail smoothly instead of popping as you pan.
- The frame rate is capped at 60 while a level loads and during the level intro, so your GPU stops ramping up.
Ara
- New upgrade, Upheaval, a child of Tectonic Slam. After the slam, the ground around Ara turns to Mountain for 3 turns: her own cell and the cells next to it. Water, Judgement Hill, Hallowed Ground and Barrows stay as they are. Enemies on those cells get the Mountain bonus too.
- Tectonic Slam cooldown goes from 2 turns to 3, for Ara and the Elite Cyclops.
Loading screen
- The loading screen is redone. It shows the plain Eternally logo and a tip, with a new one every 9 seconds. There are 37 tips, about rules, terrain, damage types and a few lore facts.
- The familiar is now called Knotwood in every language. Verdant is still the name of its evolution.
Co-op and enemy turns
- In online co-op, enemies now act one at a time too, in groups. Eternals within about 12 cells of each other, or enemies that two players can both see, form one fight, and its enemies take their turns in order. Separate fights still play at the same time. Each player's camera and turn order row follow their own fight. The host's Sequential Enemy Turns setting decides.
- Press Space to Continue still works only offline. While it holds an enemy attack on screen, later dice (counters, attacks of opportunity, slime explosions) now wait and show one after another when you continue.
- An enemy that rejoins the turn after leaving your view now acts next in its group instead of last.
- The camera no longer glides to enemies that then do nothing.
- Enemies that dash, charge or teleport into view, or step out of view and back, are handled more reliably.
Balance
- Enemy health at 3 and 4 eternals is lower, since not every eternal in a party of four deals damage. The multiplier is now 2.25x at 3 and 2.75x at 4. Parties of 1 and 2 are unchanged.
- Level 3, after the checkpoint: 3 of the elite monsters are now regular ones.
- Level 5: the void spreads faster after turn 8 at 1 and 2 eternals, turn 7 at 3 and turn 6 at 4.
- Level 5: once 3 refugees are home, click the centre portal to leave. You win the level for the whole party, and refugees still out there give no XP. In online co-op any player can do it.
- Summoned allies, such as the skeleton from Skeletal Hand, now scale with party size like monsters do.
- Sentinel protects your summons again. Ice Clone, Ice Wall and Menhir are still not covered.
Interface
- Empower popups no longer cover the dice. They sit beside them and keep clear of the HUD.
- The event log opens and closes with a short slide like the inventory, instead of a hard pop.
- Targeting: the cell your click will commit to has a gold outline in every mode, including Charge, cones, lines and area attacks. It only shows where the click does something.
- Legacy Relic headings at the end of a level now name the eternal, for example "Frazzah's Legacy Relic: Rimepiercer".
- Toasts of the same kind replace each other, so "10 enemies left" turns into "9 enemies left" instead of stacking.
- Auto-Select Next Hero no longer leaves the old eternal's targeting on screen.
- The camera no longer wobbles after you rotate it while it eases toward a creature.
Fixes
- After a revive, the map marker of a hero is the avatar again, not a helmet.
- Switching eternals in the Workshop no longer flips Salvage back to Forge.
- The Workshop no longer shows an empty name if it opens before the lobby eternal pick lands.