Art

Dungeon Maze Assets

• The Art team has completed a major effort in populating the Dungeon Maze with new walls, ceilings, and assorted smaller props. This includes a major lighting and set dressing pass for beautification - though lighting may be tweaked slightly in the future.
  
• In addition to the Dungeon Maze itself, a background scene and skybox were constructed for Dungeon Maze to clearly illustrate the differences from our other zones.
  
• New model for some spider variants.
  

FX

New Ability FX

• With the addition of many new NPC types (including Elites and Bosses), we’ve also added new VFX to make their abilities stand out. From the Soul Reaper to the Skeleton Commander, you’ll see a lot of new VFX popping!
  

Graphics Options

• Added in graphics options for adjusting anti-aliasing quality, along with being able to toggle V-sync
  

New Dialogue

• Dungeon Maze comes with a whole set of dialogue, including from new bosses like the Warden and Soul Reaper. We’ve also added some new lines to the Towers of Vigrith scenario.
  

Additional SFX

• Our Audio team has been creating a whole slew of SFX for new abilities, new events, and updating outdated SFX. Listen to the audioscape and let us know how you like it!
  

Menu SFX

• We’ve also completed a pass on audio in the assorted menus of the game, especially the Equipment and Rune Mod selection menus. Background music and SFX have been altered to more easily show what menu you’re in.
  

Gameplay

New NPCs

• Added new boss, ‘the Soul Reaper’. The first Jailer standing in your path, this dastardly dual wielding death dealer siphons health from enemies that stand too close to his sweeping strikes.
  
• Added new boss, ‘the Dead Caller’. - The Dead Caller. The demented mistress of the Dungeon Maze’s inner depths utilizes varying runestones to protect herself, weaken her enemies, and even reflect damage dealt. Not to mention the many minions at her beck and call.
  
• Added new boss, ‘the Warden’. One of Hel’s fiercest generals, he’ll stop at nothing to prevent your escape attempt. Fight through the officers at his beck and call and the thousands of guardsmen eager to lock you back up.
  

• Added ‘Forsaken General’ enemy type. Leading their fellow undead from the front, these commanders are relentless in their pursuit. They’re immune to knockback and crowd control effects, so running away isn’t an option!
  
• Added ‘Plague Bearer’ enemy type. Far larger than the hordes of mindless dead that they call their cousins, you’ll need patience and a lot of firepower to bring them down.
  
• Added ‘Skeleton Commander’ enemy type. Leading from afar, the Skeleton Commander will be a thorn in your side until you deal with it. This master marksman summons archers, deals high damage from a distance, and lays deadly traps when enemies get too close.
  
• Added ‘Broodmother’ enemy type. The largest and eldest of the spiders we’ve seen so far, the Broodmothers swarm Champions with hundreds of their children in tow, eager to tear you apart.
  

New Scenario

• The Dungeon Maze scenario is a brand new addition to the current scenario lineup - escape from Hel’s labyrinthine fortress while slaying swarms of undead! Dungeon Maze comes with a variety of new objectives, enemies, and doors to smash down! While we still consider Dungeon Maze to be in a Beta state, there’s a lot for you to discover in-game.
  

Match Size Balancing

• We’ve tweaked the math behind matches to balance them a bit better for different numbers of players. This includes damage and defense buffs for Champions, as well as extra lives in the Towers of Vigrith scenario at lower player counts.
  

Bug Fixes

• Completed a number of assorted SFX fixes, including playing the wrong SFX and playing SFX at the wrong volume.
  
• Fixed some unintended behavior on boss NPCs, causing them to play animations incorrectly.
  
• Fixed Intel ARC GPUs not being able to run the game.
  
• Fixed startup issues for certain laptops, due to a false reporting of their specs.
  

Bjorn

• Attack damage increased for both basic attacks and the Ground Slam ability.
  

Aella

• The Heartseeker attack has been made reworked. It will now always explode instead of requiring an enemy to be on fire to trigger. In addition, it will do extra damage to enemies that are on fire or frozen.
  
• The stun effect on Fearless Scream will now only last 1.5 seconds on bosses. This ability will still have a 5 second stun for non-boss enemies.
  

Yuki

• The damage for Yuki's Whirlwind attack has been slightly increased.
  
• Yuki's Shadow ability now only provides 80% damage production, down from 100%.
  

Jalb

• Shield Bash damage has been increased.
  
• Using both the Retaliate and Fortify abilities together will no longer provide a player with 100% damage reduction. The damage reduction from both of these abilities combined is now capped at 75%.
  
• Retaliate's retaliatory damage has been updated to return more damage to bosses without bonus multipliers.
  

Gwen

• Gwen's spear projectile attack has received an increase to damage and an added splash damage effect.
  

• When respawning or reviving, Champions will now be immune to all damage and will not be targeted by enemies for a short time. This effect remains in place even when attacking an enemy. While this existed in some form before, it was less noticeable and the protection it provided players respawning was not sufficient.
  
• The speed of stamina regeneration for sprinting has been slightly increased.
  
• The Healing Rune usable item has been buffed and now restores health at the same pace as the Healing Pool points of interest.
  

• When starting alone in a scenario enemy health has been reduced by 14% and enemy damage was reduced by 40%
  
• When starting with 2 players in a scenario enemy health has been reduced by 10.5% and enemy damage was reduced by 30%
  
• When starting with 3 players in a scenario enemy health has been reduced by 7% and enemy damage was reduced by 20%
  
• When starting with 4 players in a scenario enemy health has been reduced by 3.5% and enemy damage was reduced by 10%
  
• All games: Players start with 3 of each rune
  

• Matches of 4+ players in both the Arena and Towers of Vigrith scenarios will start with three lives.
  

• New tree LOD models have been added that should eliminate flickering and increase performance in tree-heavy areas across both scenarios.
  

• Increased drop rate of Rune pick-ups prior to the North Tower phase in the early game.
  
• Increased Tower and Pools health based on starting player count across matches.
  
• Increased Tower health regeneration when tower buttons are activated during boss fights.
  
• At lower player counts, when a pool is lost during the pool phase, nearby Dishonored Dead will begin to pursue players instead of objectives. This will make it easier for 1-3 players to defend them if one is lost.
  
• For both the West and South Tower combat phases, the total number of elites is now capped based on starting player count. Spawn rates and times have been adjusted for all player counts.
  
• During the final wave, the number of elite enemies has been capped based on player count - this cap goes away once the final fire giant spawns.
  

• Changed how many elite enemies can be active at once for different player counts.
  
• Health of Towers and Pools has been increased at lower player counts.
  
• Difficult sub-waves that could trigger randomly will no longer do so at lower player counts. These include the poison fog, fire meteorite, and ice meteorite waves.
  

• Damage numbers will now be displayed by default. They can still be toggled to hidden in the Settings menu under 'Show Combat Text'. The current setting will not change for existing users but will default to on if you return to default settings.
  
• The 'Mute All' function will now persist in menu after reopening it.
  

• Updated VFX for boss and elite spawns.
  
• Updated VFX for character spawns.
  
• Updated VFX for Surtr's abilities.
  
• Updated Death Priest Projectile VFX.
  

• Tooltip added to XP bars to tell players how much XP they have.
  
• Escape menu updated to include the player as part of the match lineup.
  
• Updated the Champion Mods/Rune Mods banner styling.
  
• Pressing ESC in the Emote/Weapons/Skins menu now closes the menu.
  

• Improved frame rates when many entities are present.
  
• Improved issues with highly variable frame rate for some users.
  

• Fix for showing victory and objective icons in the wrong UI position while dead.
  
• Fix for an issue displaying the 'Ghostly' variant of Gwen’s Horn.
  
• Fix for Towers of Vigrith scenario ending if all players are downed while they still have lives remaining.
  
• Fix for keybind mapping text 'key already bound' overlapping with itself.
  
• Fixed an issue with the player not showing up in the ESC party menu if they failed to connect to Vivox.
  
• Fix for the wrong Champion abilities shown during the 'waiting for connections' state.
  
• Fix for the auto run icon repeating.
  
• Fix for Frost Giant dialogue that wasn’t audible.
  
• Fix for an activities error occurring during rapid fire single player matches.
  
• Improvements for the stretching of XP Potion buttons.
  
• Improvements to client correction of projectiles after a network update.
  
• Fix for players getting stuck in queue after a match.
  
• Fix for groups getting stuck in a bad state if two groups invite the same person at the same time.
  
• Fix for overlapping Champion Selection SFX.
  

• When starting alone in a scenario, enemy health has been reduced by 14% and enemy damage has been reduced by 40%.
  
• When starting with two players in a scenario, enemy health has been reduced by 10.5% and enemy damage has been reduced by 30%.
  
• When starting with three players in a scenario, enemy health has been reduced by 7% and enemy damage has been reduced by 20%.
  
• When starting with four players in a scenario, enemy health has been reduced by 3.5% and enemy damage has been reduced by 20%.
  
• In all scenarios for all player counts, Champions will now start with 3 each of the major Rune types - Health, Shield, and Damage.
  

• Set initial number of lives per player to 3 in the Arena scenario at all player counts.
  
• Set initial number of lives per player to 3 in the Towers of Vigrith scenario at all player counts. Previously, this was only the case for player counts of 1-3.
  

Team Tidings

State of the Build: Update 1.0

Map Beautification

Champion Updates!

Quality of Life Improvements!

Release Notes: Update 1.0

Major Features

• We’ve introduced new XP potions for both Champion and Season XP. The Champion XP potions can be purchased now, while Season XP potions will go live with the upcoming Season Pass.
  

• We’ve implemented a system for reporting and muting bad actors in-game.
  

Art

• The current scenarios, Towers of Vigrith (formerly Horde) and Arena, have been updated with better set dressing, terrain reworks, and a new skybox on Towers of Vigrith.
  

• We’ve updated all Champions to use new V2 models. These are reworks of their skins to match the new base meshes we’ve been working on. So flex those muscles and check them out!
  

FX

• As part of a series of visual updates, we’ve changed the “burning” and “frozen” FX applied to both Champions and NPCs for better visibility…and to look way more epic.
  

Audio

• We took the opportunity to update the version of Wwise (our audio engine) we currently use. While there’s outwardly nothing this impacts, it gives us access to more tools on the audio-side for future developments.
  

• A major overhaul of soundbanks has been completed, massively improving their memory utilization. Players should see big improvements to their memory usage in-game due to this change.
  

• The biggest change players will hear would be new voice acting for all dialogue on both Horde and Arena. Our team contributed their voices to Final Stand: Ragnarok’s characters, bringing new life to the dialogue!
  

• In addition to the above, we have some other smaller audio updates for Champion Selection, SFX volume tweaks, and other miscellaneous areas of our soundscape. You may notice that Aella’s bow in particular sounds a bit more powerful with each arrow loosed.
  

UI

• We’ve added additional item tabs to the store for supporting several new item types - Sprint FX, Portraits, and XP Potions.
  

• An improvement to the final bosses has landed, which gives their health bar a special “shielded” status to clearly show their nigh-invulnerability while shielded.
  

• A variety of our UI pages have been given a visual update. This includes Season Pass UIs, the Match Summary, Champion Equipment selection, Rune Mods, and more.
  

Gameplay

• We’ve implemented a number of balance updates to Champions. The most major of these impacts Champions’ ultimate abilities - they now have different cooldown times per Champion and require Mana to activate.
  

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where occasionally Champions would go straight into dead state instead of down.
  
• Fixed a bug where the scenario summary page might not show the correct amount of XP.
  
• Fixed some cases where alert stars were not created for rewards obtained through a quest.
  
• Fixed a bug which caused the UI to fetch the player's profile many times.
  
• Champion damage boosts are now applied correctly across all layers.
  

What's Next?

Final Note

• Resolved an issue where a party leader responding to two invites at once could cause grouped players to be split apart.
  
• Resolved an issue that caused the queue to become stuck after players finished a match.