[Demo] Patch Notes — v1.0.3311

Blade forms

Nine new weapons to wield instead of the sword, won by clearing deeper and deeper stages. Each one cuts its own way, and each is tuned to match the sword on average. Your skills' copies of the blade take its form too.

When you press RUN, you are dealt three of the forms you have won, the one you wield always among them. Take one and the run starts with it, or DEAL AGAIN once for two others. The FORMS chip opens a practice yard where you can watch any form at work first.

• FLAIL: a ball on a chain whirls round your hand, so a resting hand still cuts.
• TWIN DAGGERS: two short blades cut a body again in half the time, each for less.
• SPEAR: jabs on its own at full speed, so a slow hand cuts like a fast one.
• SCYTHE: lies across your stroke and mows a lane its own width.
• GREATSWORD: turns slowly; go back the way you came and it swings round through everything.
• WHIP: a long lash where every part cuts; turn your hand and the tip cracks.
• CHAKRAM: flies off when a quick move stops, then curves back to your hand.
• HOOK: drags what it cuts toward you, keeping the crowd packed on your edge.
• WARHAMMER: stop your hand hard and it slams the floor, cutting everything round it.

Signs, remade

All five signs are now damage casts, with new effects, art and sounds. Every sign strikes with your blade's own damage and reaches at most 3 skill units from its middle. You learn a new one every 20 levels.

NOOSE

The ring draws shut, cutting everything it passes, then crushes what it caught: 1.5×, plus 15% for every one caught (up to 10).

SNARE

Three wires cut everything inside them every 0.5 s, for 3 s.

TOMB

A stone slab falls where you drew it. The smaller you draw it, the harder it lands, up to 6×.

CROWN

Six blades circle the crystal for 6 s, sweeping in to it and back out.

SPIRAL

Every turn winds it tighter, and it bursts when you lift: 2× for two turns, up to 12.5× for five.

Practice floor

The SIGNS page is now a live practice floor. A ghost pen draws the sign, and your ink takes its colour where you follow it. The training grunts walk, take the hits, fall and stand back up.

The signs bar is now a small grid under the right end of the top band. SETTINGS > AUTO > SIGNS > SIDE moves it to the left.

New

Pacts

At level 100 the PACTS open: eight handicaps you seal on the tier page before a run, such as a shorter clock, twice the monsters or a glass crystal. Every point multiplies the run's shards by 1.2. Climb 100 stages under your pacts and your best pact rank shows beside your tier on the leaderboard. The results page and HISTORY show which pacts a run was fought under.

Daily Rift

Once a day, everyone fights the same run with the same loaned blade and the same three opening cards. It is endless: go as deep as you can. You get one ranked try a day, then PRACTICE. Your first try of the day that clears a stage pays 100 gems, and the next day the top 1% / 10% / 50% of the board are paid 600 / 300 / 100 gems. It opens once you have cleared stage 10, under RUN on the title.

Goods

Elites, bosses and wardens now drop goods, about one every 10 stages, onto the bag's CONSUMABLES and MISC shelves.

• Vials that mend the crystal, or double your damage, shards or experience for a few stages.
• HOURGLASS adds 10 s to a stage's clock. SECOND HEART refuses the bite that would break the crystal, once.
• OMEN SCROLL makes the next awakening page deal a high-rank card. REDRAW SCROLL is one more DEAL AGAIN.
• A RELIQUARY needs a BONE KEY, and holds a boss's piece of gear plus one more good.
• Gear goods: MASTER'S SEAL raises a piece a rank. GRINDSTONE, POLISHING CLOTH and ETCHING NEEDLE are free rerolls (about one per 100 stages).

Leaderboards

There is a new RANKS tab on the RECORD page, with three boards: DEEPEST STAGE, WILD HUNT and LEVEL. The demo has boards of its own.

• Arrows show who moved since your last look. Hover a name to see that player's place on all three boards.
• Click any line, yours too, to see that player's skills, level cards and relic tree.
• Every player picks a name when they first sign in, and the boards never show Steam names. No two players can share one, and you can change it once a week.
• DEEPEST STAGE counts a tier once you clear its stage 100.

Reviews

RECORD has a REVIEWS tab. Rate any skill, awakening, level card, relic or sign you have used from 1 to 5 drops of blood, in up to 40 words (English for now), and mark other players' reviews HELPFUL or FUNNY. When a patch changes something, its older reviews are marked BEFORE THE CHANGE and left out of its average.

Level-card rerolls

Each level-card seat now rerolls once for free. A reroll flips the card: the old one snaps shut and shatters in its tier's sparks, and the new one flips open as it lands.

Arrange your HUD

In SETTINGS > HUD > ARRANGE you can drag any part of the fight's HUD wherever you want it. Double-click a part to send it back, or press AS DESIGNED to reset them all.

Zoom out

Zoom now also goes out to 75%, 50% and 25%, showing the whole floor and the cave around it. Your swing feels the same at every zoom.

More

• Hover cards: hover any picture on the results page or on a HISTORY run to read its card: each awakening, each piece of gear you wore, and each source of damage, with what it dealt that run. HISTORY also shows your total play time.
• Iron anvil: the forge has a new anvil. It flashes white-hot with every purchase, heats up under a held strike and rings with every blow.
• Stage pennant: the stage number hangs on a crimson pennant, and the top band shows the road of ten stages, warning you one stage before an elite, boss or warden. Brackets lock onto each elite as it walks in.
• Guided tours: the ? on SKILLS, LEVEL CARDS and SIGNS opens a guided tour, with numbered notes pointing at what they explain.
• Cloud saves: your record is saved online through Steam. If two PCs both have progress, the one you played most recently wins, and the other copy is kept on the server for 30 days.
• CONQUEST: a new achievement. Clear stage 100 on a tier, and every run opens holding one more random awakening, one for each tier cleared.
• Pixel type: the whole interface now uses pixel fonts that ship with the game, in every language except Thai.

Changes

• Level cards are all passive now. The twelve casts (Caltrops among them) are gone, and 48 new passive cards join the deal, 60 in all. A fourth tier, MYTHIC, deals from level 210.
• A melt now pays embers by depth: (stage reached + sword tier − 100) × (0.5 + 0.25 × difficulty tier). A harder tier pays more for the same depth, and there is no separate stage-100 gate: a high enough sword lets you melt sooner. SWORD MEMORY counts your sword's tier twice.
• EMBER HEART multiplies shards ×1.05 a rank (was ×1.3). BOSS TROPHIES pays an ember a rank for every 10 boss stages (was 25). IRON LEDGER costs 1,000 embers (was 5).
• Right after a melt, you can give relics back for their full price (right-click one, or RESET ALL) until you start a run or buy at the forge.
• You can melt again only 30 minutes after the last melt. The forge and the ascension page show the countdown.
• The crystal's health now grows with your damage, so deep stages and high tiers no longer break it at the first touch.
• Starting on a later stage no longer deals free awakenings for the stages you skip; the run opens as one on stage 1 does.
• On the title, WILD HUNT and the new DAILY RIFT are tabs beside DIFFICULTY under RUN.
• An awakening card's DPS figure is now worked out from your own run, counting everything you deal, skills and signs included.
• Achievement payouts sit behind a hover: each milestone opens a card with what it pays.
• When you can't buy a skill yet, SKILLS tells you what's missing: the level and skill points you need, with a meter for each.
• SKILLS, LEVEL CARDS and the forge show fewer numbers. Hover a held level card for its full text.
• Card videos in the draft now play on their own, and a skill's video on SKILLS starts just before its cast.

Fixes

• BURNING PATH's fire no longer stays lit on the next stage.
• Continuing a saved run from its card page no longer buys an extra IRON LEDGER forge level.
• Past the floor's right edge your mouse cursor now shows, so you can aim at the HUD there, as you already could on the left.
• Moving from one skill to the next on SKILLS no longer flashes a bright frame before its video.
• The level-10 signs guide is no longer skipped when you draw a sign right away or use free drawing.
• ERASE RECORD during the level-10 signs guide no longer leaves the guide's card on screen.