Update v0.6.0 "Ashes & Ambush": fire, tunnels, rafts and a Blood Moon

major update

Shadow Slayer · published · build 26341795

The biggest update since Shadowlands. Fire spreads, crates break, every point of interest is a decision, caves connect, rivers carry you, and some nights the moon comes up red. It also brings everything from v0.5.5, which was never released on its own: the whole game in your language, and a Steam Cloud fix.

Fire and oil. The fire bomb sets tall grass alight: throw it into a meadow and the whole field burns. On dry plains or desert ground it starts a brush fire. Enemies caught in it keep burning, and a fire is loud and lights up the night. One oil flask now stays in your bag: G (RB on a controller) throws it as a slick that slows whoever wades through it. Any fire lights it: a fire bomb, a burning enemy, a torch-bearer, a campfire. Lure a patrol onto the oil, then bring the fire.

Crates and barrels break. Dash into one, shoot it, blow it up or burn it, and it drops a herb, an oil flask or XP. Whole, they block sight. Breaking one is loud, and the guards nearby come to look.

Points of interest that each play differently. Climb a watchtower with E and every enemy nearby shows on your maps for 12 seconds, but up there you are exposed: shadows and grass no longer hide you. A blood shrine shows you a relic and asks a fifth of your max HP for it. Pay, or walk away. Stand in a ritual circle and a 40 second beast trial starts: slay every wave for a relic, or outlast it for Shards. Every map has at least one of each.

Tunnels. Caves come in pairs. Press E at a mouth and you come out of its partner somewhere else on the map. Whoever was chasing you searches the wrong cave, but the way out rumbles and the guards nearby come to look.

Rafts. On the widest rivers (Midnight Vale, Deepwood, Thornwood and the Wildlands) a log raft drifts between two landings. Step aboard and it carries you dry and quiet.

The Blood Moon. A rare red night when only beasts roam: patrols come as wolf packs, the elite is an alpha wolf, and every relic drops as a pair. It never comes in your first five runs, and daily and weekly runs get the same moon for everyone.

Damage types. Every weapon is physical, magic or status, shown on the level-up cards and in the Armory. Beasts shrug off a little physical damage and people a little status damage (fire, poison), and the Codex shows who resists what. A silent kill is still a kill, whatever the weapon.

Also new

  • Patrols, alarm sweeps and Blood Moon packs now get the same extra health as every other enemy, and grow with Endless, NG+ and Ascension.
  • At a high alarm a map only sends the hunters it has.
  • Co-op and duels: player 2 throws oil with Right Ctrl, or RB on the second controller.
  • Everything the game says about itself is translated: every hunter, weapon, passive, upgrade, map, enemy, relic and achievement, the place and target names, the story and the intro, in Russian, German, French, Spanish and Hebrew (about 800 texts). Daily trials are still the same world for everyone, in every language.
  • Copy my last runs: Settings, General copies your last 20 runs as plain text, so you can show us where a night went wrong. It stays on your PC.
  • A one-time ask for a Steam review on the results screen. No reward, nothing blocks you, and Later and Do not ask again are right there.
  • A Discord tile in the More menu, and a one-time Join the Discord card after the first night you win.
  • Slayer, Huntress and Shade now read as three ways to play: the all-rounder, the long shot and the silent one.

Fixed

  • Steam Cloud now restores your save on a new PC or after a reinstall, and a fresh install can no longer overwrite your cloud save with an empty one.
  • The Discord link in the game works again (the old invite had expired), and links in the desktop game open in your browser instead of a second game window.
  • Resuming a saved run keeps your relics, your weapon evolutions, the crates you smashed and the places you already reached, so nothing pays out twice.
  • While you hide, knives in flight, smoke, traps and the campfire no longer freeze in place.
  • Fire and the Duel ring hurt at their real rate and no longer make you briefly immune to other hits.
  • First Night: a body next to the haystack no longer blocks the hiding step. E now acts on whatever is closest to you.
  • Dropping a body out in the open now tells you to drag it into shadow, a building or water.
  • Level-up cards: a new passive was tagged New weapon, and orbiting weapons showed a cooldown of 999999.
  • Hebrew: switching language keeps the right text direction, and numbers with a plus or minus sign show it on the correct side.
  • Level-up cards, pickup toasts and the death recap no longer stay partly in English, and sentences that name a map or a hunter read correctly in every language.
  • Killing a caravan's mules no longer counts as wiping out a patrol (Pack Hunter), and Blood Moon kills don't count toward Apex Rival.
  • Plus a long list of smaller fixes to fire, rafts, tunnels and the new points of interest, found by playing all 18 maps automatically in every mode and all six languages.

If a text reads wrong in your language, tell us in the Discord or a Steam discussion: native speakers are the best editors we could ask for. And if you're enjoying the game, a Steam review helps more than anything else.

Thanks for playing.

Update v0.6.0 "Ashes & Ambush": fire, tunnels, rafts and a Blood Moon · Shadow Slayer patch notes · SteamPeaks