After the launch of the Coral Archipelago Update we immediatly started working on the next major one: the Crimson Highlands Update. This upcoming one will make possible to visit the 4th world with the most dangerous Zodiacs as long as playing Calie, the Geomancer.
We have already made great progress on this update and we should be able to release it early Q1 2023. But do not worry, we will take our time to polish it as much as we did for all previous updates. We will share more about the Crimson Highlands Update in next newsletter as we have exciting news to share in this one!
New Exporter & new Systems available!💪
Once again we had ambitious & promising new features ideas for the next upate but instead of releasing everything at once as we did for the Coral Archipelago Update, we decided to release part of it for you to play right now on Steam!
This new content is getting available alongside the long awaited New Exporter version provided by our partner MP2 Games and we would like to thank them again for the tremendous work porting the whole Astral Ascent game from our game engine to C++ for the best possible performances!
This new exporter fixes a lot of crashes and issues (like Steam Remote sound issue) & massively improves FPS allowing you to play at constant frame rate with almost no loadtimes.
This new version will change your game experience by making it much more comfortable and fluid, in particular for smaller settings. The game is also now playable for Steamdeck with very stable 60fps, you can even do Remote Play co-op with 2 Steamdecks without issues.
However expect some inconsistencies (badly oriented elements, small visual glitches etc.) as this build is very close but is not yet the same as the main build, we are still working on it! If you see anything wrong please let us know on our Discord Server in the #bugs-report channel.
Level up system is the answer!✨
Basic attacks issue - Basic attacks do not become more powerful with time unlike your spells with levels & gambits so the more you progress the weaker your basic attacks feel and are. Also, getting Auras for your basic attacks was preventing you to have Auras for other purposes so you would sometimes sacrifice interesting builds to get them.
Utility Spells issue - Utility spells were very inconsistent as it was rare (and occasionally too frequent) to get one. Sometimes they were strong, sometimes they were too weak and it was easy to forget to use them as they were not really part of our build.
From these questions emerged new systems
Signature spells - They completely replace the Utility Spells that we removed from the game, they are new and unique spells based on cooldown different for each Hero. You will have many synergies to discover and play with from one run to another as you can improve them with the Level up system! Kiran signature spell is "Parry then Punch!", making you temporary invincible!
Level up system - Defeating enemies will now grant you experience points, filling an experience bar above your HP, when it reaches a certain threshold, your character will level up gaining maximum Health, Basic attacks damage and the possibility to claim a Prowess. Octave, level 7 with 9/40 xp points to level 8
The Prowesses - They are a set of passive skills that can be claimed in intro rooms of each world, including first world, when interacting with the giants there. Every level, you will be able to claim 1 additional prowess to a max of 8 in a run. These prowesses are of two kinds: Basic attack (right) & Signature Spell (left)
The Prowesses for Signature spells are unique to each hero, there is a lot to try out! Also, Zim-Zim now has an ability to make you reset the choices of Prowesses.
Ayla's signature spell "Shadow Mark" (teleports behind enemies) with reset on kill Prowess
Andromeda's trials! 🧩
Another fun addition to the game are the Andromeda's trials!
In the exploration rooms, sometimes you will find a purple altar, interacting with them will teleport you to a new room where you will have to face a platforming challenge without being hit to get one of the famous rainbow drinks poured by Andromeda herself!
Do not worry, if you get hit you are simply teleported outside but you will not lose HP so feel free to try them as many times as you want! We personally love them and we hope you will too!
Discord trading card game!🃏
A smaller addition has been made to the Discord server, the Astral Ascent Digital Trading Card game!
Every day Barbecue offers you a new card from his fine collection! You can trade them with everyone or merge them to gain rarer cards (4 rarities for the 39 existing cards) and get the greatest collection!
Hop on our discord to get a card whenever you want!
There was no newsletter last month but be sure we are working our hardest to make the game the best it can be and we are still active on the Discord Server for any of your suggestions and feedback!
Oh, and here are some extra elements!
We added a Glossary that you can check anytime while ingame!
Merchants culture is ancient and not very well known but they remember it through these statues
Oloon wanted her place to feel more precious as you can imagine
More improvements are coming later!
Don't forget our Backerkit shop and our Discord Server to speak with the community and give us feedbacks on the game!
Have an excellent week ahead and next time we will share about the upcoming world 4!
The Hibernian Workshop Team
Patch Notes - September 2022 - 0.37.7
⭐Changes inspired by our community!
Major Features
Sun&Moon room: Sun/Moon portals are announced a few rooms before they appear - ☄️ hotfix 0.37.1
Small Features
Spells on sun room can have a minimum of 2 gambits on it
Octave unlocking condition: Octave is unlocked after meeting with any world 2 zodiac instead of beating them.
Voice Over: Integrating missing lines of Sagittarius
The Garden: Adding a teleporter to navigate faster in the hub
Enemies: W3 small snake attack feedback improved
community inspired ⭐ It's not possible anymore to start runs through NG+ menu by pressing ""down"" when the start button is selected. - ☄️ hotfix 0.37.1
Malice cost increased by 1 (total of 3) per level - ☄️ hotfix 0.37.1
Ember effect spreads itself in a smaller area - ☄️ hotfix 0.37.1
Added cooldown to auras that had triggers related to player taking damage - ☄️ hotfix 0.37.1
Zodiac lines during battle are played a little bit louder - ☄️ hotfix 0.37.1
Spell cycle is reseted after respawning on hub - ☄️ hotfix 0.37.1
Smoother autoclimb - ☄️ hotfix 0.37.6
Zodiacs on bar: - Zodiacs found on bar has a bigger minimum chance to join you - Zodiacs found on bar has now 50% increased chance to join you if they have zodiac affinity - ☄️ hotfix 0.37.6
Interface
LB/RB Navigation in menus of hub
Changed Collect All input for Achievement UI
Added a Collect ALl input for Papa Yalee UI
Narrative Design
Typos fixed
Extended translations for Russian & Korean
Bug Fixes
Malice that spawn extra enemies on zodiacs fight wasn't working in world 3
It was possible to unlock memory fragments of undefeated zodiacs
Old save files would get player to be stuck into the loading screen
Name of worlds could be wrongly displayed in the level progress UI
During coop mode it was necessary to press inputs twice to move through relics in the inventory
Starpiece multiplier could wrongly be enabled for save files prior to the ""The Coral Archipelago"" update - ☄️ hotfix 0.37.1
community inspired ⭐ Zodiac lines during battle are played a little bit louder - ☄️ hotfix 0.37.1
Oloon reset input would not always be displayed - ☄️ hotfix 0.37.2
community inspired ⭐ Virgo Electric orbs could remain on ground - ☄️ hotfix 0.37.2
community inspired ⭐ Virgo electricity particles could remain after defeat - ☄️ hotfix 0.37.2
Draco could have a wrong behavior during meteor attack if ultimate comes up - ☄️ hotfix 0.37.2
community inspired ⭐ The game could not save game progress properlly in some users computer - ☄️ hotfix 0.37.3
Fix on game save files path in computers with unusual setup - ☄️ hotfix 0.37.5
community inspired ⭐ Basic attack icon wouldn't change after swaping characters in the hub - ☄️ hotfix 0.37.6
community inspired ⭐ Players could get stuck during some bosses fight (Scorpio and Sagittarius) after being revived by Ikki summon - ☄️ hotfix 0.37.7
community inspired ⭐ It was possible for players to get stuck into fight room walls during co-op mode - ☄️ hotfix 0.37.7
Play a new Character, explore a new World, fight new Zodiacs and much more!
Thanks a lot everyone for your patience regarding this Update, we created so much more elements than we originally anticipated in order to create the best and most complete experience possible for this first Major Update (several more to come!).
This version sadly does not contain the new exporter that will solve many crashes and increase performances by a lot (if you have performances issue, don't hesitate to check this guide). We have made huge progress on it but this new exporter still contains issues so we thought it would be better to release it once it is totally ready but you can expect it to be released Q4 2022, take a look at our Roadmap iff you want more precisions about it. This version also does not have a complete localization to supported languages yet, when translations are missing it should be replaced by English for now, we will update when we have receive the texts.
For the next weeks we will be working on solving the main bugs/balancing issues that you will encounter so do not hesitate to report these on our Discord Server where we have dedicated channels for that. We will also start preparing the mid W3-W4 Update.
If you want a complete list of what is new, here is our complete Patch Notes link and the main features listed below - https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1280930/view/5009714462577553599
Major Features
New Playable Character - Octave: New range hero with 11 unique spells to unlock
New World to Explore - The Coral Archipelago: New assets, new traps and new enemies
New Zodiacs Battles: Scorpio & Pisces. Face these 2 members of the Orphnée family
Scorpio & Pisces challenges: Get their summons through their challenges
Sun Room: Exchange your quartz to access powerful spells
Moon Room: Exchange your maximum life to access Zodiac unique powers
Zodiac Spells: Find and use 7 news powerful zodiac spells: Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn, Sagittarius, Leo, Pisces and Scorpio
Echo Isles Room & Summon your Friends: Pick among 15 different summons of your friends so they can help you during your run
New Miniboss - Draco: Fight a dangerous new Miniboss
community inspired ⭐ Andromeda's bar interior: Visit the Zodiacs there and the more victory you have against them, the more likely they are to join you
Affinity Zodiac: Your Constellation sign can now randomly help you (once you met at least once) and will more easily join you in Andromeda's bar
community inspired ⭐ Pixel Art Animated Portraits: Legacy Portraits will still be accessible through game options but default portraits will now be Pixel Art and hand-animated
Fight Rooms Rework: Complete rework in order to have waves / difficulty depending of level of the room
New Affinity System: Spells now have elemental affinities (fire/ice/thunder/poison and neutral) and they gain power with related elemental gambits attached (up to 100% bonus damage)
New Synergy System: Rework - Many Auras has been reworked and a DOZEN additional new auras have been added
New Synergy System: Rework - Many Gambits has been reworked and a THIRTY additional new Gambits have been added
We would also like to thank our community and Play Testers for the great support provided to our small team, we are doing our absolute best to create this game we love.
New Playable Character - Octave: New range hero with 11 unique spells to unlock
New World to Explore - The Coral Archipelago: New assets, new traps and new enemies
New Zodiacs Battles: Scorpio & Pisces. Face these 2 members of the Orphnée family
Scorpio & Pisces challenges: Get their summons through their challenges
Sun Room: Exchange your quartz to access powerful spells
Moon Room: Exchange your maximum life to access Zodiac unique powers
Zodiac Spells: Find and use 7 news powerful zodiac spells: Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn, Sagittarius, Leo, Pisces and Scorpio
Echo Isles Room & Summon your Friends: Pick among 15 different summons of your friends so they can help you during your run
New Miniboss - Draco: Fight a dangerous new Miniboss
community inspired ⭐ Andromeda's bar interior: Visit the Zodiacs there and the more victory you have against them, the more likely they are to join you
Affinity Zodiac: Your Constellation sign can now randomly help you (once you met at least once) and will more easily join you in Andromeda's bar
community inspired ⭐ Pixel Art Animated Portraits: Legacy Portraits will still be accessible through game options but default portraits will now be Pixel Art and hand-animated
Fight Rooms Rework: Complete rework in order to have waves / difficulty depending of level of the room
New Affinity System: Spells now have elemental affinities (fire/ice/thunder/poison and neutral) and they gain power with related elemental gambits attached (up to 100% bonus damage)
New Synergy System: Rework - Many Auras have been reworked and a dozen additional new auras have been added
New Synergy System: Rework - Many Gambits have been reworked and a thirty additional new Gambits have been added
Small Features
New effect: Ignition: Burns enemies over time and inflicts burn stacks
New effect: Fire Wisp: Summons a fire whisp that follows the hero, shoots enemies and inflicts burn stacks
New effect: Sapling: Summons a small sprout that runs, explodes against enemies and inflicts poison stacks
New effect: Slime: Summon slime that bounces and inflicts poison stacks
New Effect: Plasma: Create a lightning laser that pierces enemies and inflicts lightning stacks
New Effect: Cumulonimbus: Summons a cloud of lightning that blasts enemies and inflicts lightning stacks
New Effect: Thunder Orb: Create a lightning orb that persists on the field and inflicts lightning stacks
New effect: Snowflake: Create a snowflake around the hero and inflicts freezes stacks
New effect: Ice Idol: Create an ice idol that hits enemies and inflicts freezes stacks
New effect: Stalactite: Sends ice spikes bouncing off walls and inflicts freezes stacks
New effect: Critical: % chance to inflict a critical hit
Summon Zodiac: (Rework) Taurus: Now deals immense damage to all enemies on screen
Summon Zodiac: (Rework) Virgo: Now deals damage to enemies and has a % chance to spawn when hitting enemies during the hero's basic attacks
Summon Zodiac: (Rework) Sagittarius: Now follow the players by shooting arrows continuously and end up with a strong attack
Pantheon Room: Backers statues Room in now accessible in the Garden
Spells Reworks: We removed some of the beacon utility spells
Spells Reworks: Some common & specific spells have been visually and gameplay reworked
Spells Reworks: Dodge effect has been added to several spells, when a spell has it you are invincible during certain frames of the spell
Voices feedback: When being hurt and when casting spells
Camera: In several places we improved camera
Camera: Camera movement when Zodiacs do their ultimates
Camera: Camera is less zoomed by default
Camera: Challenge Sagittarius: Camera is more dezoomed
Cetus Room improvement: Better descriptions of the gambits, new categories of gambit and third random loot is more frequent and can only be a slot unlocker
Elites visual rework: Elites have been visually reworked a lot
Lupus Miniboss: During ultimate, a magnet effect affects player
Spells altar: New category of altar you can find during your runs where you can choose between 2 spells
Memory Fragments: You can now only get Memory Fragments from characters you already crossed
NG +: Thorn feedback improvement
Enemies: Improved behavior placement for many enemies
The Coral Archipelago Update is coming on September 19!
✨Our first major Update on Astral Ascent will be available Monday 19 September, 7pm CEST! ✨
New playable character, new world, new Zodiacs and so much more!
Follow our journey: here is our roadmap!
💫 Let us introduce: The Astral Ascent Roadmap! 💫
We thought you might be interested in the timeline planned until the release of the Yamat DLC! We'll update it as the adventure goes on!
New character, new Zodiacs, new challenges and contents coming soon! 🔥
Astral News - August 2022
September it is! 🌅
We have a release date for the World 3 update named "The Coral Archipelago Update", this release date is in September 2022, which means we are only a few weeks away from releasing a game changer update for Astral Ascent. We know this update has been very long to release but we added much more than we anticipated to the game.
A world update is supposed to contain -
A new playable character (Octave for this one that comes with 11 unique spells)
A new world to explore (+ 8 new enemies and 4 level design elements)
2 new Zodiacs + their challenges and summons
World 4 Zodiac blocking your path
In addition to that we added -
Zodiacs Spells system (it means 7 of them already)
Reworked some existing Zodiac summons
Sun & Moon new room type
New mini-boss - Draco (whose fighting style might remind you of someone!)
Kinship System & Echoes Room, you can have up to 4 friends to summon by your side from a total of 15 possible summons (Zim-Zim, Oloon, Ikki, Ordan, the Heroes and much more)
Pantheon room accessible for those who paid an ingame statue of themselves (with or without their pets)
Andromeda's bar interior with new friendship system with the Zodiacs that will make chosing your constellation meaningful (this is not final yet but close to what we had in mind)
Major synergy rework that will make your runs much more interesting with many new or reworked auras, gambits, effects
One more complicated and very requested element is still unannounced ✨
But that's not all as we have also improved so many small details all around, from small UI improvement, to enemies AI and balancing, about everything has been closely looked and observed to be improved (even the Credits screen has been reworked!), at least we did our very best given the small team that we are.
That being said, there is one major element for this update that we took the decision to postpone. It is the New Exporter named "Chowdren" version. The game is already playable on this version but there is many small elements that are not as polished as they are on the regular version. It is really sad for us to delay this version as it changes about everything -
Game is running incredibly faster
Many crashes are solved
Remote Play Together sound problem should be solved too
Loading times are feeling inexistant (as you can see on below video)
But Astral Ascent is a massive project and it takes time for our partner to solve all the small issues and we currently do not know when exactly this new version will be ready and instead of keep delaying the world 3 update we decided to delay the Chowdren version and make it live as soon as it will be as good as the main version of the game so you can expect a small update between world 3 and world 4 updates with this optimized version and hopefully some more exciting elements (we already have some ideas). Our goal is to avoid impacting too much the world 4 release period that should take less time for the world 3 one.
Rest assured that our porting partner is doing an incredible job and the project could not be in better hands, new version will be worth the wait!
Affinity system! 🧊
Continuing with the new effects and synergies that we created for this update, we added a final touch - The Affinity System. This system will give you a way to make you spells even stronger by having certains type of gambits on it corresponding to the element of the spell. When you equip a gambit on a spell with an elemental affinity that is the same as the gambit, the spell will gain an increased percentage of bonus damage dealt on hit.
Spell with fire affinity + fire gambits
However even if that is very clear that Magma Comets have a fire affinity, some spells do not seem to match a specific affinity like the Spirit Sword below, but don't worry! These spells are considered to have a neutral affinity, instead of having no affinity they actually have an affinity with every gambits but with a lesser increased bonus damage percentage. To make things more open we have decided to make specific spells like Fireballs to be randomly neutral and for some spells like Ayla's shuriken to randomly have any affinity type. We think that is yet another very exciting change to the synergy system as it creates even more strategy when equiping spells & gambits.
Spell with neutral affinity + any gambit
New zodiacs challenges! ♏
Expect new challenges to come with this update! 2 new challenges made for Scorpio & Pisces, the new Zodiacs. Even if Scorpio is really mean, he would be a very powerful ally to have by your side to escape the Garden!
Kinship system is done! 🐺
The new kinship system is finally done! Your friends from The Garden will now be able to help you in your journey. You can find exclusive "Echoes" in the Echoes Room that will grant you an unique ability related to one of your friends. Enjoy some of those new summons effects!
Ikki can save you once per world!
Ordan will give a piece of her mind to the Zodiacs you will face.
Other heroes like Kiran will also come to your help!
Old visual effects rework! ✨
With all the polish going on, we took time to redo some of the older visual effects of the game to make them look even cooler and cleaner than before. Have a glimpse!
We have very excited to release the update, see you in September!
Don't forget our Backerkit shop and our Discord Server to speak with the community and give us feedbacks on the game!
Hardworking team
Have a nice week! -The Hibernian Workshop Team
We're part of the Tiny Teams Festival!
We're happy to announce that we are part of the Tiny Teams Festival! ✨
For this special occasion, Astral Ascent will be played on Yogcast's channel on August 7! As good news never comes alone, you can get Astral Ascent on Steam with a 10% discount from August 1 to 8!
This entire month has been dedicated to finishing all the ongoing features. This is a very ambitious update that we are working on, here are some recent news about it.
New Effects, Gambits and Auras: the Synergy rework🔥
We were not entirely satisfied with the Gambits, Effects and Auras that we had in the game. We knew the system was very interesting but when creating builds we felt it always lacked - Synergy.
What we call Synergy is the possible combinaisons between the different playable elements that you can find in the game - Spells, Gambits, Auras, Effects.
We had the feeling that very few synergies existed and it was mainly about multi-hit spells and mono-hit spells. After a lot of design talks, we improved the system and made many changes to improve it and make it more central to the game progression.
- First, we removed many of the Auras and Gambits that were not very interesting to play with, for example the ones dealing more damages if enemy health is full or depending of number of effects affecting the enemies.
- Second, we added several new unique effects to create more synergies opportunities between your spells, auras and gambits! What we call Effects are elements negatively affecting enemies, we have also reworked the way Effects stacks are displayed above enemies as you can see below.
We also added some new summons that will trigger Effects, here are some for you to enjoy!
A feeling that we had in game for a while was the feeling of not really choosing your build regarding the gambits you equip on your spell, here are some balancing changes according to this. Spells will now always come with at least 2 gambit slot available minimum. Gambit slot unlocker cost has been reduced from 200 to 75 quartz to be a lot more affordable.
- Finally we also reworked all the Gambits icons and Aura icons to have a more distinct personality and be much more clearer.
Some of the new gambits icons
Some of the new Auras Icons
The coral archieplago progress 🏝️
The coral archipelago content is now complete! All the new enemies have been done and will now enter polish phase. Here's a quick tease of what you'll be facing in the world.
Dale has also came through this month with the new great theme of the 3rd world, enjoy a glimpse!
Andromeda's bar interior progress 🍹
Now that the bar interior is open, you will be able to meet the zodiac there in a more peaceful context, discussing with them and if you're lucky they might even consider joining you in battle!
Taurus agrees to help you!
A Jukebox is also available inside for you to enjoy the game ost!
Elites visual rework 💀
Another system that got a visual rework are the elites enemies. They now have an all new color palette applied to them to really feel like different enemies! We also reworked the UI to have icons above their head instead of a text for a better visibility.
Elite Wooden Guardian
Finally a small gameplay glimpse of Octave 🎯
Keeping you updated with Octave, here's a small gameplay clip of some possible combos between his spells, enjoy!
We are entering a critical phase for the next update, for now we prefer to not give a precise release date for this update as we do not want to compromise on quality.
Don't forget our Backerkit shop and our Discord Server to speak with the community and give us feedbacks on the game!
Don't forget our Backerkit shop and our Discord Server to speak with the community and give us feedbacks on the game!
