Sanctums

The world now generates with 8 large Sanctum dungeons. Two of these Sanctums are guaranteed to spawn near the starter region, Greenhaven.

These are massive dungeons crawling with enemies. They offer healthy heapings of loot, including access to many of the game's late-game items if you get lucky (assuming you can survive).

They are balanced to be highly challenging. Expect further updates in the coming days and weeks as we continue to balance and tune the difficulty.

Enemy Types

These dungeons introduce a whopping 17 new enemy types! Nearly all of them feature new monster abilities.

Elementals are volatile beings spawned from pure energy.

The Stormbringers themselves come in a variety of types. Standard mages utilize the same Pyromancy and Fulmination abilities currently available to the player. The dungeon bosses… well, lets just say even the developers struggled to defeat them.

This roster of spellcasters brings us to a significant mechanics change: enemy humanoids now use energy to cast their spells, drawing directly from a limited energy pool.

Monsters using energy fundamentally changes combat by introducing new counter-energy tactics to defeat them, such as applying Frostbite wounds to reduce enemy energy regen. Enemy mages who spam abilities will eventually run out of energy, meaning you can actively choose to kite them, and simply wait for their initial barrage to end before moving in.

This also opens up the design-space for us (as developers) to add more counter-energy mechanics in future updates, such as specialized poisons and unique abilities.

Being the big-brained spellcasters they are, mages have some new behaviors. When Stormbringer mages run out of energy, they will actively attempt to flee, keeping their distance until they are sufficiently recharged, and then return to hunting or wandering.

We won't spoil all the specific behaviors and abilities here, leaving you to discover the rest in-game!

Magic Artifacts

Deep within the Sanctums you will occasionally find mysterious magical artifacts. These structures were originally collected by the Tempest Order and hauled back to their Sanctums for analysis. Each artifact exhibits strange behaviors that you can interact with in some way. In future updates, we plan to add more of these, including some specific quest tie-ins.

Items

What's a new dungeon without items? Inside the Sanctums you will find dozens of new drops, including 4 new types of mage staffs, various mage robes, and 7 new unique jewelry items.

We will be going into much more detail on weapons (including staffs) in a future weapons update, which is coming soon.

Other Changes

• Monsters now use energy with max energy and energy recovery rates; mage enemies consume energy to cast spells. Note: some existing monsters such as bandits still need to be converted to use energy.
• Damage taken from traps is now reported to the text log.
• Increased feather drop rate from Turkeys to 3-12, and adjusted nest drop rates.
• Gear tooltips now display current/max durability when the appropriate quarter mastery passive is unlocked (previously showed only percentage).
• Rebounding strike ability now correctly applies to all magic abilities.
• LwjglSoundPlayer is now set as the default audio player. Added further improvements sound memory management & performance, with the aim of addressing sound delay issue on Steam Deck.
• Added console command to unlearn/remove unlocked abilities.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed Fire Absorption stat not functioning as intended.
• Fixed percent physical damage bonuses not displaying in stat tooltips on the character details pane.
• Fixed animation flicker when loading saves after changing world scale settings. Before the fix, animated entities would briefly appear in incorrect positions before snapping to their proper locations.
• Fixed control bindings displaying as [?] unsupported characters on Mac (e.g., NumPad-X, Space, Shift, Tab). Key text definitions have been updated for Mac to use compatible names like "Option" instead of "Alt" and "Return" instead of "Enter".
• Fixed typos in various game texts.
• Fixed Lamassu's Harden ability not writing its heal message to the combat log due to XML syntax error.
• Fixed incorrectly positioned Fire Pillar animation used by Moreld Rothk and fire elementals.

What's Next? (Why This Is Part 1)

As you can see from the sheer size of the Sanctums and new enemy types, a massive amount of work went into this update. However, we chose to label this as Part 1 because there is still more we want to add to this faction.

First and foremost, the Tempest Order quest isn't quite finished yet. Along with adding the associated story arc and final big baddie, we plan to add more overall content, plenty of extra polish across the board, and a smaller, 4-difficulty variant of the dungeon.

We wanted to get the new dungeon to you soon, rather than sitting on it until the quest was done. And let's face it: the community has been a huge help with balance feedback, so better to get it out there and get your feedback. Please let us know how it goes and how many times you die!

• Fixed summons not being targetable with the Bond ability.

• Fixed Trusted Movement enchantment and Sprint ability xp gain not triggering on player movement.
• Fixed enchantment-based status effects not refreshing when enchanting equipped items.

Other Changes

• Added new icons for all of the new Jewelry and potion items added with the v0.6.1 update.
• Stormbringer Fanatics now equip (and have a chance to drop) three new items: Immolation Staff, the Execration Staff, and the Fanatic Hood.
• Storm Disciples of the fire variant now equip (and have a chance to drop) new item: "Burned Staff".

Bug Fixes

• Fixed mage robes not salvageable at workbenches. All mage robes are now salvageable.
• Fixed Fire Damage stat calculation error, incorrectly multiplied with physical damage multiplier.
• Fixed out of bounds exception when multi-tile creatures are knocked back at the edge of the map.
• Fixed out of bounds exception from insanity illusions of multi-tile creatures spawned at the edge of the map.
• Fixed Overcome the Odds removing Over Encumbered effect.
• Added elemental crust as a drop from spiritfire elementals.