Underworld Ascendant
Jan 2 Weekly Update
More info to follow on KS rewards, playtest updates, and our plans for Update 2 as we work those out.
#ICYMI, we also have a post-Update 1 Survey available here.
We'd love to hear from players who have picked up UA again after Update 1, and what else you would like to see improved.
Update 1 - New Save Game System is Live
Greetings, Ascendants!
Update 1 is here! It includes the new save system and more.
Save Game System
We've completely overhauled Underworld Ascendant’s save game system based on player feedback.
This new system saves the following:
World State
- Enemies, chests, doors, levers, chandeliers, torches, sconces, braziers, and water level will save their states and location
- All spawned items (e.g., weapons, food, etc.) including location and position
- Silver Sapling location and status
- Enemy Health
- Enemy status effect with durations
- Door damage
- Combustibles will remain lit
- Gate / Portcullis state (up / down / in transit)
Quest State
The new system will save and restore the current state of the quest, including the required items and enemies as necessary. If a player saves after finishing objectives, this objective will be saved.
Player State
- Position, rotation, crouching
- Current health/damage
- Current Mana
- Status effects
- Inventory
- Hotbar
- Stash
- Known spells
- Faction Favor
- Influence
- Completed quests
- Skills
- Held items
- Player session stats associated with level progress (e.g., enemies killed)
- Existing player stats associated with prior level progress
A few things are not saved:
- Arrows that are not at rest
- Spells in the middle of being cast
Important Note: Saving is disabled when the player is off the ground or within 15 meters of enemies
Combat
We made many updates to Combat in Underworld Ascendant as further outlined below. We have also made a few improvements to AI and have plans for more AI enhancements in the next update.
- Directional attacks are available at level zero without their status effects and they do the same amount of damage as a heavy attack. We’ve revised the previous skills granting directional attacks as follows (Swords / Axes and Maces / Unarmed):
- Blade Master / Mighty Blows / Fists of Iron - heavy left and right attacks now stagger enemies (LMB + Left and LMB + Right)
- Fighter’s Fury / Bloody Barrage / Fists of Fury - heavy forward attacks now stun, and heavy back attacks knock enemies down (LMB + W and LMB + S)
- Deft Maneuvers / Savage Maneuvers / Shielded Strike - holding heavy attacks longer charges up the attack and does a bleeding over time extra damage (hold LMB longer)
- Light attacks do a bit more damage (20% more)
- Light attacks if spammed have a reminder tooltip every 10 swings explaining the difference between light swings (tapping LMB) and heavy swings (holding and releasing LMB)
- Unskilled Heavy attacks no longer stagger opponents
- Pluto’s Gate received a combat tuning update: Spectral Knights (skeletons in chainmail) have been replaced by Spectral Warriors (skeletons with sickles and bows, who are now slightly weaker and do less damage) and some Spectral Warriors have been replaced by Spectral Thugs (headless skeletons, who are now weaker and unable to block).
- Combat VFX are now more visible: VFX Blood is brighter and VFX Collision FX are bigger – this goes for Stone, Wood and Bone impacts.
- Short swords have a bit larger attack colliders so they will connect hits more reliably
- We made tweaks to enemy stagger behavior during combat so they don’t get stuck on the defensive all the time
- Physics damage has been increased, making throwing objects at enemies a good strategy.
- Enemies now react better when they are hit with a thrown object
- Arrows should now working correctly in The Underswamp
- Outcasts teleport less often in and out in combat and have better flee point checking.
- Spectral Warriors no longer attack inanimate objects (like torches and doors) when damaged by them.
Quests and Levels
We made updates and improvements to the levels and quests in the game as follows:
- Removed many immersion-breaking holes and seams in the world
- AI population pass on all levels to better balance encounters and provide more and more varied creatures to fight.
- Later levels are now accessible earlier in the game due to changes we made to the doom counter.
- More to do and see on the first two main quests
- LODs adjusted to reduce graphical popping on higher end machines
- Gather quest items now have a map region highlighted
- Many enhancements to Upper Eberus
- Moved hub lever to a more interesting spot
- Made an easier connection to the top floor in the Ruins of Gwern
- Fix spike room trap
- More interesting way into transitional 2 façade
- Fix traps on path toward Necrotic Graveyard
- Call out first pungie trap
- See into first cell from entry
- More prison theming in murgo’s prison
- Bring cohesion and purpose to set dressing in murgos
- No way out of first drop down room
- Trap left path to gibbet cages
- Guard station up the guard station-stealth
- Clear death at the bottom of the incessant pit
- Puzzle to enter the tomb
- Traps in the tomb
- Wooden verticality in necrotic graveyard
- Clearer lead to tomb side entry
- Fix hole above typhon chest in tomb
Items
Weapon wear overhaul:
- Weapon wear is visible on the weapon model, and weapons at their lowest condition appear broken
- Added sound for weapon breakage
- Weapons degrade more slowly
Loot drop update:
Better selection of weapons available in the shop
Weapons are now easier to find in the world
Updated some weapon models
Brighter handheld light gem
New health potion added to the game as a clear, available option for healing
Player Movement
Player movement is now more responsive and fluid
For Hotfix 1.03 (released 11/29) included improvements to player movement in and out of water, added swimming, and reduced keyboard and mouse input lag.
Player Growth
We’ve made some changes to player growth and to improve communication of skill availability
- When a spell fails for lack of an eligible target, it no longer costs mana. This should help you experiment more freely with new rune formulas.
- Resherak can now be found in Pluto’s Gate; visit him to train new skills earlier than ever before.
- New Feats are available in Pluto’s Gate to give players more Memora for their first encounter with Resherak.
- The Skills panel now grays out skills that are not yet unlocked, so you can tell the difference between them and skills whose precursors in the tree you just haven’t got yet. (Remember: you’ll be notified when returning to Marcaul if new Skills have been unlocked.)
Other
- The game now remembers your key binding preferences (one of the top requested fixes from the community)
- Hint text now stays longer on the screen
- Players can now brighten the overall game more using the slider found during new game creation and in the options menu
- Players can now read and listen to the Memora that they find as quest goals
- New option to disable mouse smoothing
- Disabled WASD movement key while in the character naming box. It’s now easier to have a name with an “s” in it, for example.
- Edits to English VO for length
- Full German VO now in game
- General audio balance tweaks
- Somewhat better performance
Understanding Weapon Wear
To help you understand how weapon wear works in the game, and how the different states of wear compare to each other, please see the below chart. Note: Magical items do not wear down.
Weapon durability is as follows:
- Pristine 80% and above
- Excellent 60-80%
- Serviceable 40-60%
- Worn 20-40%
- Broken 0-20%
Damage degrades from weapon. At 50%, “Serviceable,” a weapon will do 75% of its damage. For example a sword that had a base damage of 33, would now do 24.75 points of damage per heavy swing. At the absolute lowest, a “Broken” weapon with 0 points of durability will do half of its damage.
Weapon and Armor Types
To help you make decisions about what weapons and armor to chose, here is some more information about how those items work in game.
There is a baseline ‘par’ damage number per weapon type as follows:
- One handed sword – 33 points.
- One handed Axes and maces and bones – 35 points
- One handed dagger – 15 points
- Unarmed – 10 points
Armor from worst to best is as follows:
- Cloth/Robes
- Leather
- Chain
- Heavy (Plate/Splint)
Known Issues
- There are still some holes in levels -- we will continue to fix them.
- A small handful of memora logs have no proper title text or text for the audio. These will be found in some Intrigue faction quests. The quests are still completable and will count towards your memora log count.
- "You have learned a spell!" text appears with no context when you head toward The Moat of Khnum in Upper Erebus.
- Some DLC items do not appear in the Midnight Forum stash unless the player starts a new game.
- After reloading a save, some items, like water bottles, may not return to exactly where they were when you last saved.
- Sometimes jumping into physics objects like tables, crates, or chests, can sometimes hurt you and sometimes gravely hurt you!
- The Dash skill isn’t as reliable over rough terrain as we’d like it to be.
- Climbing a chain while swimming can result in getting stuck on the chain.
- Steam cloud saves are not yet working correctly.
- You cannot scroll through the backpack with scrollbar when in trade UI
- You can occasionally lose a stack of items when you move it in a container (backpack or stash)
- Aelita can run out of money
Underworld Ascendant | Development Roadmap December 2018
Greetings, Ascendants!
Today we are sharing our post-launch development roadmap beginning with Update 1, which will plan to go live next week. Our goal is to address the biggest issues brought up by the community and to improve the overall quality of the game.
We have also included our plans for Update 2, which will go live early next year. Further details and timing are outlined below.
We have a discussion thread for the update here:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/692840/discussions/0/3216031607494065970/
UPDATE 1 - Next week (Pending QA Review)
Save system
We’ve completely overhauled Underworld Ascendant’s save game system based on player feedback. The goal is to ensure your efforts as you adventure through the Abyss, particularly during quests, are saved.
Under this new system, you will be able to save your progress anywhere in the game (with a couple exceptions) from the Pause Menu.
When you save a game, you will retain your location in a level, whatever steps you’ve completed toward a quest and all items and equipment you’ve collected in your inventory. Enemy positions, health and more will also be saved.
A full description can be found in the Save Game Details section at the end of this post.
Combat
We have refined Combat to make it more dynamic and responsive and to add more variety to attacks.
First, we are changing the way directional attacks are being handled. Now, every player will be provided with these attacks at the beginning of the game. Instead of using skill points to unlock these attacks, skill points will now make these attacks more powerful.
A balance pass on weapon damage and enemy health has been made with an aim to making combat more engaging, particularly in early levels.
Some initial improvements to AI have been implemented and we have plans for bigger updates in the new year.
Quests and Levels
Many immersion-breaking holes and seams have been removed and levels have more refined and more varied enemy populations.. Pluto’s Gate and Upper Eberus have received a number of enhancements to improve playability and make them feel more “lived in”.
Items
You’ll also see some weapon and loot changes in this update. An item’s wear will now be more apparent, with weapons showing damage wear over time as well as appearing broken when they have reached that state. We improved loot drops in the world as well as weapon availability in Aelita’s shop.
Player Movement
In update 1.03 we made changes to improve player movement. This included the addition of swimming, reduced keyboard and mouse input lag and better transitions into and out of water. Those fixes along with Update 1’s increased base player speed has helped make player movement more responsive and more fluid.
Other Improvements
We’ll give more details in the update Build Notes next week, but some highlights include saved key binding preferences, better visualization of which skills have been learned, the ability to learn skills sooner and more.
UPDATE 2
February 2019
Our overall goal for Update 2 next year is to continue to make the game more interesting, more fun, easier to understand, and more polished. We will continue to improve things like combat, AI and levels. We will also focus efforts on player progression, adding variety to the gameplay and improving the overall player journey through the course of the game.
Most importantly, we will continue to gather feedback from our fans and players after Update 1 to see other areas where we can continue to improve the game.
Here are highlights of what we are planning for Update 2:
Combat and AI
We will continue to make improvements to combat to make it more fun and engaging—please continue to give us detailed feedback as you play! On the AI front, we’re planning to improve behavior, responsiveness, communication to players and navigation. Our goal is to make enemy behavior more interesting and more natural to players.
Meta Game
We are evaluating ways to improve the overall player experience during a full play-through to better communicate requirements to complete the game and also reduce the complexity around what players are supposed to be doing to stop Typhon.
Levels
We will continue to look at improvements to levels, including adding more enemies, environmental storytelling and potentially streamlining the layout of Marcaul.
Quests
Our goal is to make quests more interesting and less repetitive. We are also scoping out improvements to player experience in the beginning of the game through enhancements to Pluto’s Gate and Saurian’s Challenge to expose players to fun gameplay elements more quickly.
Other
We’re looking to continue to make the game easier to understand (aka better tooltip text), improve performance, improve load times, and continue to fix bugs
There you have it, our roadmap for the next two updates. Beyond that, our plans will take shape as we gather more feedback from the community and evaluate the game’s progress. If you have constructive feedback on Update 1, please check out the discussion here.
Thank you!
The Underworld Ascendant Team
ADDENDUM: UPDATE 1 SAVE SYSTEM DETAILS
The following are the current build notes for the Update 1 Save System. Please note that some details may change between now and when it goes live.
You will be able to save your progress anywhere in the game from the Pause Menu.
The new system saves the following:
World State
- Enemies, chests, doors, levers, chandeliers, torches, sconces, braziers, and water level will save their states and location
- All spawned items (e.g., weapons, food, etc.) including location and position
- Silver Sapling location and status
- Enemy Health
- Enemy status effect with durations
- Door damage
- Combustibles will remain lit
- Gate / Portcullis state (up / down / in transit)
Quest State
The new system will save and restore the current state of the quest, including the required items and enemies as necessary. If a player saves after finishing objectives, this objective will be saved.
Player State
- Position, rotation, crouching
- Current health/damage
- Current Mana
- Status effects
- Inventory
- Hotbar
- Stash
- Known spells
- Faction Favor
- Influence
- Completed quests
- Skills
- Held items
- Player session stats associated with level progress (e.g., enemies killed)
- Existing player stats associated with prior level progress
A few things are not saved:
- Arrows that are not at rest
- Spells in the middle of being cast
Important Notes:
- Saving is disabled when the player is off the ground or within 15 meters from enemies.
- We are still working on saving in Marcaul. It currently does not save player position or world state, but does save inventory, stash, skill point changes, etc. in addition to saving quests completed (as a result of Hap sending you to the Midnight Forum), but you will start at the Ring of Portals when you re-load.
Dec 3 Weekly Update!
It's the weekend after we pushed Hotfix 1.03, and I spent the majority of today combing through community-submitted reports and queueing them up for our QA team, as well as coordinating Kickstarter goods. (We got a new pass at Resherak in the office, but he's a little too big... sneak peek at the 4" figurines anyways, unpainted, for those curious!)
Our priority for this week and the next is tackling bugs and larger issues that have been brought up since launch. This includes working on a save system (more details on this next week, since we're still testing a couple of potential systems right now), the inventory stacking bug, gameplay blockers, crashes, and potential redesigns in combat and the quest system. Today was a heavy meeting day as we hashed out how we'd like to tackle some of the riskier updates (save system, quests, and combat) while fending off bugs.
As liveops continues, I'd also like to introduce Rich Gallup, our Executive Producer who's been steering our ship since launch day! He's been an incredible force to work with, and has been a lifesaver for keeping us organized and on track for the last few hotfixes. You may also recognize him from some of the dev videos we've been putting out with each hotfix update!
Hoping to have more Kickstarter updates as well, particularly on some of the digital goods that just need a final review. I'll continue to monitor community-submitted bugs throughout the week and keep those KS goods rolling... thank you to everyone who's been tirelessly submitting, particularly with output logs/screenshots/locations! Makes our jobs a lot easier for reproducing bugs and getting to the bottom of certain issues. (Such as some reports of arrows not working on aggro'd skeletons in Underswamp... we thought we fixed the overall arrow issue, but it seems arrows can still be inconsistent under particular circumstances. Looking forward to knocking this bug out, as a Stealth main myself!)
That's all for now, and we'll share more as we continue to work on the game.
Hotfix 1.03 & Dev Video
Click To See Video On YouTube
NOTE: Video has been updated!
Here are the fixes included in the most recent hotfix 1.03.
- Added "Swimming" (Crouch while in water to sink)
- Walking through shallow water has been improved
- Arrows now function as expected after Underswamp
EDIT: Arrows are reported as inconsistent in Underswamp. This is logged. - More magic runes are now in Aelita's rotation for sale
- Fullscreen exclusive graphics option is now preserved between gameplay sessions
- When the player collects the final Abyssal Key, the gate to the Midnight Forum now opens as expected
- Fixed a rare bug when The Vault of Nyx did not open when the player had all 8 keys
- Saurians are now less chatty
- The secret shortcut to the Vault of Nyx has been sealed
- Infinite loading screen crash for the opening level has been fixed
- Subtitles can be now toggled On or Off (See: Options->Gameplay)
- Graffiti language in-level now changes when the player changes their language settings
- Tuned movement controls for stopping and starting. The controls now respond faster to player input
- Kickstarter backers will receive 8 dire berries instead of 1
- General movement fixes
- Various rare crash fixes
We are still working on adding more updates to the game. Thank you for your patience!
Nov 26 Weekly Update
A weekly update a little later in the day than usual...
So the team has returned from Thanksgiving travels and we spent the majority of today alone just having meetings and brainstorming how and where to go from here. We already have a list of priorities we'd like to work on as quickly (and safely) as possible, and try to maximize our time.
We have another hotfix queued up for this week, particularly tackling crashes near the beginning of the game (before even Marcaul!) and common movement bugs, like the player being sluggish in water. We're aiming to have a lot of other fixes in too related to bug reports we've received about AI and combat issues. Additionally, the fullscreen exclusive option and turning subtitles off will be available.
Other issues we're working on are upping the consistency of arrows (sometimes they fire, sometimes they disappear, etc), more combat and AI issues (especially to show when they're afraid / low on health and want to flee, etc), performance in areas past the Underswamp, and of course making the save system more accessible while we also work on bugs. (Like putting "swim-crouching" back in!)
In the meanwhile, it will be really busy in the office for us as we continue to coordinate with you and our KS backers on your digital and physical rewards. After this week's hotfix, we're also working on an improved save system and improving more performance issues by mid-December.
As always, we're open to hearing your feedback and suggestions - and bug reports. Keep them coming!
Development Update Video - Nov 20, 2018
We have a short video from the Underworld Ascendant dev team to keep you updated on what the team is working on.
Click the image to watch on YouTube
Thanks for playing!
Nov 19 Weekly Update!
What a weekend, huh?
So for anyone new to the forums: welcome! Let's get some of these FAQ out of the way first:
I'm a backer and I haven't gotten an email from BackerKit with my key!
Log in using your Kickstarter credentials here: https://underworld-ascendant.backerkit.com/
Navigate to your Digital Downloads and you should see your Steam rewards!
I'm a backer and I'm missing some digital rewards. What do I do?
Certain digital rewards are being bundled by Valve and will be available as another Steam key on BackerKit. We will let you know when those are available!
We've been receiving reports of backers having problems downloading the DLC for Companion Creatures and have been working with Valve to figure out how to properly distribute these rewards, since this could affect distribution of our other digital rewards. (We think we recently discovered the issue with this, and we'll update you all when this is confirmed fixed.)
You can see the list of digital rewards' status here:
https://otherside-e.com/wp/ks-rewards-update-1-week-till-launch/
Rewards listed for "Launch" will be available as soon as we figure out the distribution issue with the Companion Creatures.
Rewards listed as "Post-Launch" will be tracked in a longer KS rewards update post either this week or the next.
I'm a KS backer but not of the ADVENTURER tier - do I get the Week 1 Companion Creatures?
Yes, but because of the distribution issues (see above), we have not distributed these yet.
I encountered a terrible bug / crash! How do I report it to you?
Please send us your output log to support@otherside-e.com .
You can find your output log on your computer here:
C:\Users\[Your Name]\AppData\LocalLow\OtherSide Entertainment\Underworld Ascendant\output_log.txt
If you'd like to discuss your bug reports with other players, feel free to post it here:
Technical Support Thread
We'll be checking this board every day to see if any new bugs pop up, and if any of you figure out a solution we can act on!
I may not respond to every thread, but I try to collect as many output logs as I can.
...phew. I think that's the gist of the FAQ section.
As for this week, my biggest priorities are coordinating with all of you on what's going on behind the scenes, as well as working with 505 and Steam to make sure those digital rewards reach their backers. I'm aiming to put up an updated version of this KS Rewards post from the week before launch so it's easier to track which rewards are at what stage of development.
Many of us are working on-call this week in preparation for the Thanksgiving holidays. We've been tracking a lot of bugs and crash reports over the weekend, and that's given us a good idea of how we should be prioritizing for this week and the next. We may not have a big update this week because of Thanksgiving, but we're working on another hotfix/update for the week after.
(Keybinding preservation between save states and spell-book entry preservation between levels in particular are higher up on our list.)
We did push a hotfix on Friday, which, if you missed the update, contained these changes:
Hotfix 1.02
Hotfix 1.02
Today’s hotfix addresses a number of quick fixes for reported bugs and localization issues. It also adds logging to help us track down crashes. Your 21:9 support is here too!
We will continue to work on the top community issues that will take a bit more time to address (save games, AI, saving option settings, art glitches, crashes, player movement and performance, etc.).
FYI - If you are experiencing crashes, please make sure your drivers are all up to date AND verify your files via steam.
Go to the game in your Library > RIGHT CLICK > Properties > local Files Tab > Verify Integrity of Game Files
You can see the entire list of today’s changes below.
Hotfix 1.02
- Russian text previously displayed missing text as blocks. This has been fixed.
- Subtitles were added in the intro sequence for certain languages (French, Chinese, etc).
- Partial French VO has been removed.
- Faction Influences have been adjusted so more is gained from Side Bounties and the total required to unite the factions is lower.
- Item names and descriptions have been updated in Japanese.
- Additional monitor aspect ratio support added, like 21:9 (note that the UI may stretch in certain areas).
- Player spellbook entries are preserved between levels.
- Fixed issue where a pile of items incorrectly spawned at the start of some levels.
- Player sound effects removed between loading screens.
- In-Game Language choice preserved between play sessions. (Note that the Graffiti on walls will remain in the original language until you enter a new level).
- MAGIC FIST spell now visibly causes an impact reaction on enemies.
- Added more logging to help gather data on crash bugs
Video Message from Devs
Click image to view message on YouTube
Going forward we will be looking at the big topics from the community: save games, AI, saving option settings, art glitches, crashes, player movement and performance, etc.
We are currently prioritizing and determining the development needed for the issues that matter most to the community.
Your feedback in the discussion forums is appreciated!
Thank you
- The Underworld Ascendant Development Team