Every card charges, and a last biome

Why this round

Since the bestiary I've been playing the build myself, controller in hand, and writing a ticket for everything that felt off. Most of what follows started as one of those notes, or as an idea I wanted to try. As before, the simulator played 600 runs on each change before it stayed.

Hold, aim, release

Every card now has a second way to play it. Tap it and it plays exactly as before. Hold its button and it gathers: a small circle grows out toward a ring around you. Let go as the two meet, when a chime sounds and the ring flares gold, and the release is perfect: the card gives its most and hands back half its cost.

• What a hold grows depends on the card. Arts reach further, sweep wider or hit harder. Bolts hit harder, and bursts, cones and pools spread wider. Steps carry further. Wards and buffs last longer.
• The ground shows what the hold buys. A preview of where the card will land grows as it gathers, over a faint outline of the most a hold can give.
• You can aim while you hold, with the right stick, the mouse or by walking, and the card goes where the preview pointed. You move at a walk while it gathers.
• A full charge takes 0.35 seconds. The simulator tried four lengths: shorter meant more perfect releases and quicker fights, and any shorter than this would have made the perfect close to automatic.
• Ember Step now passes through foes, cutting what it crosses. Held, it carries up to 2.75 times as far in the same time. Bull Rush charges in a straight line with its path drawn.
• Counters, answers and backsteps stay instant. Their point is already timing.

A run with an ending

A run used to stop at the Drowned Vault's boss. Now a fourth, last biome follows it, short and all climax: a rest, an arena, a rest, the final boss. The arena seals and sends four waves that climb from common foes to two elites to a miniboss, The Fourfold. Past it waits The Cindered King, and the run's win. Each wave you hold heals a little and pays two Embers, and the elites' wave pays a relic.

It's a first pass. The biome wears a working name and the Cinder Wastes' look, and both bosses fight as plain bosses until their own movesets are built. What it already does is give a build more time to take shape: at the King a run holds about two more cards, two more upgrades and one more relic than it did at the Vault's boss.

• Wave rooms. One room on every level's way to the gate now seals you in and sends a second wave. Hold it and the seals lift and you heal. The first tuning dropped simulated expert Knights from 82% of runs won to 49%, so it settled on one extra wave of one foe.
• Elite rooms are set pieces. Their foes appear only once the room seals: a pale ring closes on each spot, then the foe steps in, never right beside you. Nothing can be pulled out or sniped from the hall first.
• Locked shortcut doors are gone. They cost a walk around for a saving the map's warps already give.

Levelling with a goal

Stats used to run to 99 with shrinking returns, and no run ever got one past 38. Now each stat caps at 30, and reaching the cap masters it. The simulator compared this flat cap with one that rises biome by biome. Both were mastered about as often, and the flat one is a single number to learn, so it stayed.

• Vitality: one more health flask.
• Endurance: rolls and backsteps cost 20% less.
• Mind: spells cost 15% less mana.
• Strength: a heavy blow breaks any wind-up but a boss's.
• Dexterity: plain swings recover 15% faster.
• Sorcery: a spell that lands leaves a small burst on the foes beside it.
• Occult: your brands and sigils last 25% longer.

A misread costs a little less

The last biome widened a gap that was already too wide: simulated mid-skill players won 19% of runs and experts 80%. The gap opens in the Hollow Cathedral, which ended close to half of mid-skill runs. Six difficulty changes, tried one at a time, lifted both groups alike and closed nothing. The two differ in how fast they read a blow, so the only thing that narrows the gap is forgiving a misread.

Two rules do that now. Once the first blow of a foe's string lands on you, the blows after it deal 60%. And a blow that takes a quarter of your health or more leaves ashen health you win back twice as fast, and that lingers twice as long. Mid-skill players now win 39% of simulated runs and experts 90%. The Ashcaller was pulling ahead of the other classes, so its sorcery bonus came down from double to 80% more.

The deck in your hands

• Two ways to reshuffle. Once your hand and your draw pile are both spent, the deck comes back by itself after two seconds, free, whatever you're doing. Or stand still and hold a card button on an empty slot for half a second: cards now, for a Wound shuffled into what's left.
• Step cards earn their slot. A card step keeps the combo it cut into, the next action within a moment of landing costs 40% less, and a perfect dodge with one shakes the foe harder. The roll is unchanged: it stays the safe answer.
• Upgrades that change how a card plays, one per class to start. The Knight's Guard Up can jar every foe that strikes it. The Duelist's Lunge can spring back out of reach as it lands. The Ashcaller's Gathered Will can make the next spell cast itself twice. The Breaker's Ground Slam can shatter a foe it breaks so the ones nearby reel. The Hexbinder's Brand can bind two foes so each takes a share of the other's hurt.
• Your deck list opens over any choice, with your class, level and stats on it, and closing it puts you back on the option you were weighing.

More in the world

• Training. The first New Game offers a coach with seven short lessons: move, strike, guard, parry, roll the red, play a card, drink.
• Ember braziers in the Cinder Wastes. Fire wakes one: it flares, then bursts in a ring that burns everyone in reach, you included.
• Each biome has an omen of its own: the Ember Well, the Silent Confessor and the Sunken Reliquary. Omens that curse you now lay a curse that fits their gift and lifts when you leave the biome.
• Two more potions, Grindstone Draught and Cleansing Salve, and about one urn in seven now holds a potion. Two relics lean into them: Apothecary's Satchel doubles how long potions last, and Pilgrim's Tally pays an Ember for every omen you accept.

Bodies, weight and a HUD you can read

• Every family of foe now has a body baked in Blender, like the classes'. Bodies are shaded by the lights in the room, step as they walk, draw back as they wind up and slump when staggered, and are drawn a fifth larger.
• A landed blow now freezes only the two bodies in it, so a crowded room reads as weight and not stutter. The whole world still stops for a kill, a parry or a posture break, and a big moment never loses its freeze.
• Health, stamina and mana show their numbers inside the bars. The boss bar has a row of its own, card frames show rarity alone, and menus hold one size as you move through them.
• The map greys out what you've used and the elites you've beaten, and a weapon on the floor shows its change in attack in green or red.

Closer to shippable

• Every word a player reads now goes through a translation table, so the game can be translated.
• The Linux build ran on Linux for the first time, and crashed at once over a missing system library. It's fixed, and the main screens are checked at the Steam Deck's resolution. A real Deck is still to come.
• Fixes from play: the controller keeps working after you alt-tab away and back, and a run restarted after a death starts clean, with no leftover flasks or burned cards.

What's next

• The last biome's own look, music and name, a four-armed moveset for The Fourfold and three phases for the King.
• A Descension pass. Its pressure is mostly longer strings, which the softer follow-ups now forgive, so experts win more than they should on the higher levels.
• The Duelist. Mid-skill players still win far less with it than with any other class, and its parry cards are where to look.
• The playtest with outside testers. Whether holding a card feels good on a pad, and whether players use both reshuffles, only real hands can tell.