Nine New Weapons, a Burning Sword and the Thief's Hand Crossbow

Nine New Weapons

Ashburrow has nine new weapons and a crossbow. Every one of them is carried by the thing that drops it: if a skeleton comes at you with a falchion, that falchion is what it can leave behind. What you see a creature holding across a camp is what you can walk away with. All of it is in the free demo, which has the whole world in it. The deeper named are a stretch for a character at the demo's level 10.

Five carried by ordinary creatures

These drop now and then from the creatures that fight with them, and each fills a gap the old weapons left.

• Sevenfold Mace. Seven flanges round an iron head. A one-handed mace, carried by the clan's shamans and the Rimefang whelps of Frostspire Reach.
• Broadback Falchion. One edge and all the weight behind it. A blade for either hand, carried by skeletal warriors and the fallen watchmen of the keep.
• Quietsteel Dirk. Blackened so it does not catch the light. The Thief's first weapon worth finding, off the skeletal cutthroats.
• Lugwing Spear. Two lugs below the head, so whatever it goes into stays at the far end of it. Two-handed, and the better of the Ashmane spear, carried by Ashmane guards and skirmishers.
• Anvilback Hammer. A face for armor and a spike for whatever is inside it. A one-handed hammer, carried by the orc priests.

Four named, and the four best

Each of these fights with its weapon and is the only place it comes from. They are not rare: the two you meet first are there on three clears in four, the two deeper ones on every other clear, and the weapon drops more than four kills in five.

• Skarra Hookmane (level 12), in a side chamber of the lower warren. She carries the Moonhook Glaive, and she cleaves: her swing catches everybody standing in it, so a pair fighting her shoulder to shoulder are both cut.
• Ysmay the Unburnt (level 15), at the Ember Altar in Cinderscar. She carries Kindlewrath, and her blows burn.
• Durgo Tuskbreaker (level 17), on the temple stones of Frostspire Reach. He carries Mammothfall, a great maul with a mammoth's tusk in its head and a ward against cold. Every class but the Thief can swing a maul.
• Ser Edric Penhallow (level 18), kneeling among the knights on the keep's fifth storey. He carries The Long Penance, a two-handed sword, and he feints before he strikes.

Kindlewrath Sword

The steel is black and the fire in it has never gone out. Kindlewrath burns along its whole blade and lights the way around you, so it is a torch as well as a sword. Every blow that lands burns for a second hit of fire on top of the steel: armor does nothing against the fire, and fire resistance does. A parry, a dodge, a block or a timed guard stops the fire with the blow. It also wards you against fire a little, which you will want where Ysmay lives.

The Thief's hand crossbow

The Thief now starts with a hand crossbow in the left hand and a dagger in the right, and no buckler. Only a Thief can use one.

• One button. Within arm's reach, the attack is the dagger. Beyond it, the crossbow. You do not switch weapons; the distance decides.
• A long reload. It waits six seconds between shots. It is not meant to keep up with a bow. It is the opening shot from the dark, and the occasional one after, with the dagger doing the work in between.
• Two of them. The Worn Hand Crossbow, and the Goldcrest Hand Crossbow for a run that begins on a road of level 6 or higher.
• In a headset, you point it with the hand that holds it and loose it on that hand's trigger.

Also since the last update

• The older named come more often and pay a little more, and their own rewards drop more often too.
• Champions can taunt: Taunt at level 3, and Clamor from a tome at level 8.
• Landed blows give back endurance, and big hits land with more weight.
• Falling hurts now.
• Sixteen Steam achievements.
• A character arrives in a column of light in their class's color, to their race's own sound. A bought guard is called onto his post with a horn.
• Every road's starting kit lies on a stone dais, with a place for each of up to six players.
• New sights: tents, larders and cook fires in the clan's halls, a fallen bridge in the rift, Ymra's seat at the back of her hall, the Stone Temple's altar, the Reach's camps and the giants' gate, Cinderscar's altar, glass and dead trees, and mountains at every edge of the world.
• Frostspire Reach has weather: snow that builds into storms.
• Music and sound: the Bloomdeep, the castle tower and the dungeon each have music of their own. Chests, levers and doors have their own sounds, there is an echo underground, and you can hear the dragon down its tunnel.
• Graphics: an Ultra preset, a second interface theme and a HUD opacity slider. Alt+Enter no longer runs a 2 GB graphics card out of memory.

Try them 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.