Early Access Patch Notes - The Crucible
Our team has been super hard at work for the last 2 months and we are super stoked for you all to play this first Update for No Rest for the Wicked!
We have revamped the Cerim Crucible from the ground up which is now twice the size, has new art and music, features extensive randomization systems, 200+ Echoes and a full fledged Rogue Lite mode! We also added a new enemy faction known as The Gloam, the Seneschal vendor, ability to Exalt items, and so much more.
Please note the Spoken and Unspoken quest has been changed and progress reset. You will need to redo the start of the quest to gain access to the Crucible!
For the feature deep dive,
check out our blog on The Crucible.
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Performance:
- Reduced CPU spikes occurring when loading new areas and content.
- Reduced CPU spikes occurring when instantiating numerous visual effects and objects.
- Reduced memory usage in various systems.
- Improved our broad-phase culling pass, reducing CPU utilization.
- Improved content loading sequencing to reduce cases of on-screen pop-in.
- Improved particle simulation and rendering performance for various debris effects.
- Improved mesh trail performance.
- Improved cloth simulation performance.
- Improved character animation system’s performance.
- Improved CPU performance during cinematic sequences.
- Reduced CPU overhead for physics simulation of clutter, debris and destructible objects.
- Reduced CPU overhead for pre-placed corpses.
- Reduced CPU overhead for animating objects’ visual properties.
- Reduced CPU overhead for characters outside of the camera viewport.
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Quality of Life Improvements:
- All hairstyles are available on both body types
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Content Additions:
- Major Crucible Rework!
- Added multiple new base Crucible Chambers
- Each trial run now randomizes more than triple as many arenas, and includes more diverse art styles, new enemies, and more environmental challenges
- New system - Echoes - to allow infinite customization for every Crucible run
- Added new Spike Traps, Fire Projectiles and Levers
- New enemy faction - The Gloam
- The Seneschal vendor NPC hidden deep within the Crucible
- Exalted gear which permanently increases stats and improves enchantments
- New interactions and dialogue for the Watcher in “Spilled Blood”
- Lots of new dialogue for Roan, who now provides tips and pointers to guide players toward quests
- “Spoken and Unspoken” quest re-structured, allowing the Crucible to be opened much sooner, and including new scenes and dialogue for Elsa and Roan.
- Added new hairstyles for both body types
- Players can now pet stray cats and dogs around Sacrament!
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Balance:
- Rebalanced Health and Damage curve for Enemies
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Weapons:
- Updated names and descriptions for some Armor/Quest items
- Updated descriptions for Runes
- Added more enchantments for Bows
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Enemies and Bosses:
- Polished animations and timings for several enemies
- Added new Armor variation to the Risen Ironhand
- Updated enemies behavior - now some of them can use jumps for navigation
- Updated Attack, Dodge and Taunt animations for Light Plagued Enemies
- Improved randomization on enemy armor sets
- Improved hit reactions on Siren Enemies
- Updated High level behavior
- Enemies can now use special moves more often
- Rebalanced stats of both phases of the Echo Knight boss
- Nerfed Health of both phases of the Falstead Darak boss fight in The Black Trench
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Areas:
- Improved collision, faders and set dressing in Sacrament, The Black Trench, Nameless Pass and Cerim Crucible
- Added new trapdoor interactable
- Updated foliage in various locations
- Lighting improvements across many locations as well as housing interiors and vendor shops
- Added interactive inscriptions for Dasha statues in Sacrament and Orban Glades
- Added Mini Arena underneath Prison in Nameless Pass
- War room rooftop door can now be entered before Servant of God quest is finished
- Replaced more static barrels with destructible ones in Sacrament
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Quality of Life:
- Improved interaction priorities between ladders and pick ups so they can both be used in the same location
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Settings:
- Added Mute Audio on Focus Loss setting
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Input:
- Improved input responsiveness / performance (removed rewired)
- Improved logic for actions that can share buttons with others:
- Interact / run / rune toggles can share a button with more other actions that don't conflict
- Prevented overlapping several cases of actions that behave poorly together (eg: interact / eat food)
- Added support for Numpad input
- Added movement axis mappings on Mouse buttons
- Added optional "toggle walk/run" input to all schemes to allow running without holding a button
- Stopped processing input while the steam overlay is active
- Added input priority when performing rune attacks and when near interactables
- Fixed cases of the UI referencing default mappings and/or keyboard mappings when on gamepad (or vice versa)
- Prevented quicksteps/rolls from occurring between consecutive bow rune attacks
- Fixed "reset to default" resetting your keyboard/gamepad mappings while editing the other device
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Cinematics:
- Animation and Lighting updates to Opening Scene, Risen Attack, Ship Ending, Ellsworth Speech, Seline at Mountain Gate, Winnick and Rattigan Sewers Ending, and Inquisition Arrival cinematics
- Added spinning animations to the ship’s steering wheel during Risen Attack cinematic
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Audio:
- Added New VO lines for several flavor and quest NPCs
- Added Foley Mix overhaul for a number of Player and Humanoid Enemy movements, such as ledge Clambers
- Added consistent enemy voice and weapon/shield hit reactions
- Updated Bow SFX
- Unique vocalizations, movement and Combat SFX for Fungal Humanoids
- Updated audio for a number of potions, like Stamina and Experience
- Updated weapon SFX for unarmed, blunt and slashing fist combat
- Reworked combat and UI sounds for charge attacks, specials, enemy-death, blood splashes,
- Updated cinematic mixes for the Ship Prologue, Cerim Chamber Statue and Inquisition Arrival Cinematics
- Added custom vocalizations for enemies or the player falling to their death
- Updated spatial audio zones for a number of areas
- Added bespoke wolf-den ambience audio
- Audio Tech:
- Integrated additional sounds for UI that was missing audio, like the community chest, readables, and contributions for bounties/challenges
- Optimized walk/jog/run animation tagging to use resources more reliably
- Other miscellaneous optimizations to reduce resource usages
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VFX:
- Improvements to the Mist in the Crucible Atrium and Arenas
- Improvement for the timing on the Crucible Blood Offering vignette VFX
- Added Spark VFX whenever enemy gets interrupted to give better player feedback
- VFX Improvements for Statue Reveal in the Crucible Atrium
- Improved the Fog VFX in the Ship Tutorial
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Localization:
- Improved UI to better support translations for realm and settings pop-ups
- Added localization to Rune and Enchantment descriptions