A Dodge Roll for Every Class and the Grovekeeper's Three Shapes

A Dodge Roll for Every Class

Tap sprint and your character rolls. Hold it and you sprint. For a moment in the middle of a roll, nothing hostile can touch you: no blow, no arrow, no spell. It is in the free demo, on every race and every class, from the first level.

How the roll works

• Tap to roll, hold to sprint. Sprint is Shift, or the left bumper on a pad. A press shorter than a third of a second is a roll, and it goes when you let go.
• Four ways. You roll the way your movement keys are pushing, or straight ahead if none are. A and D roll you sideways, and turning while you run forward rolls you on the diagonal.
• Clear for part of it. From a tenth of a second in until 0.45 seconds, nothing hostile lands on you. Getting up at the end is not covered: a roll is a way out of a blow, not a place to stand.
• It costs endurance. 12 a roll, and you cannot roll on an empty pool. Rolling is a skill every class has from level 1: practice brings the cost down to 6, and once your skill is past 95 the safe part of the roll grows a little longer.
• Nothing else while you roll. No swinging, shooting, casting, abilities or guarding mid-roll, and no rolling in the air, in water, while reeling, while sitting or in a shape.
• Every body rolls its own way. All thirteen player bodies have their own roll in each direction.
• In co-op, your partners see you roll, and the host honors a guest's safe moment against the creatures it runs.
• In a headset, first person dodges with a dash: three meters in a blink, on the B or Y button of your weapon hand, the way the stick points, or straight back with it let go. It goes less far than a roll, so it costs 8 endurance falling to 4. Third person in a headset rolls.

Creatures show their defense now too. When one dodges your blow it slips its body off the line, when it parries its weapon comes across, and when it blocks its shield comes up.

The Grovekeeper's Three Shapes

The Grovekeeper is now able to change shape. Each shape is a spell in the Grovekeeper's book. Cast it again to change back. A shape lasts until you leave it, die or go down.

• Running Wolf (level 3). Half again as fast, a quick bite that grows with your level, and a little less armour. The shape for the walk between camps.
• Spirite Bear (level 7). Far more armor. Every blow it lands turns the creature onto you, so a Grovekeeper can stand in front for the group.
• Rooted Oak (level 12). You cannot move, swing or use an ability, but health comes back three times as fast as sitting and mana as fast as studying, in a fight or out of it. The only shape that keeps its spells, so a rooted Grovekeeper can still mend the people round it. It will not take root in water.

In the wolf or the bear you have no spells but the shapes, and in any shape you cannot roll.

A change you can see

Until now a change of shape swapped one body for another in a single frame. Now there is a burst of smoke in the shape's own color, a flash, a ring and a shock across the ground, and sparks. The spirit bear kicks dust along the ground, the oak grows up out of the earth over most of a second with leaves and soil bursting round it, and when it lets go its leaves come down.

And the Grovekeeper hits harder

A Grovekeeper can now hold off two creatures of its own level. Its damage spells land at three times what they did, its skins are half again as strong, its thorns two and a half times, and it gains more health and mana a level. The Magister and the Lightbearer had the same pass. The Grovekeeper is on the demo's upgrade tree for 70 gold. The wolf and the spirit bear are both inside the demo's level 10; the oak, at 12, is in the full game.

Also since the last update

• Trader Wemble's window is a counter: your bags with a count on every stack, what he pays against what it is worth, Sell one, Sell all and Sell the haul, and everything you sold this visit listed to buy back at exactly what he paid. Tab, Space and Delete sell from the keyboard; X, Y and the right bumper on a pad.
• New screens: the death draft stands in a barrow under the burrow, the upgrade tree at nightfall in the valley, and the chest's draft in moonlight. The loading, creation, road and lobby screens show this valley at dawn, in two weathers that take turns run by run.
• Casters hold their own: the Magister gains a snare, Leaden Step, and the Lightbearer's blows land harder. A player's spell fizzles half as often as a creature's.
• Melee: a Pugilist's critical hit four times as hard and a Thief's three. A Champion's raised shield costs half the endurance and lets half the chip damage through. Cleave strikes for twice a swing.
• The target panel shows what is running on your target, as a row of runes under it.
• Bandage binds a friend close by as well as yourself.

Try it yourself

Play the free demo on Steam, and if this is your kind of descent, wishlist Ashburrow to hear when the full game launches. Thank you for playing.