[Demo] Patch Notes — v1.0.4342

Nine themes

The three themes' nine places are now nine themes of their own, THEME 1 to THEME 9: Hollow Steps, Fungal Deep and Bone Reliquary are THEMES 1-3, the Gilded Waste's three places THEMES 4-6 and the Drowned Bells' THEMES 7-9. Each theme is 40 stages long: its warden waits on stage 40, and clearing it opens the next theme. On the THEMES page, pick a theme from the scene cards along the foot while its map grows from stage 1 to 40 behind it.

• Every run starts on its theme's stage 1. START AT is gone.
• Toughness climbs in one line: each theme opens as tough as the theme before it at stage 31, and THEMES 4 and 7 one step past the stage 40 before them. The next theme no longer opens three times as tough.
• THEMES 2, 5 and 8 open on 100 monsters and THEMES 3, 6 and 9 on 150, not thousands, and climb to the 10,000 ceiling by their last stages.
• Each theme pays and plays like the old tier whose monsters are as tough.
• Bosses come on stages 10, 20 and 30, then the warden. Each run deals three of the theme's nine bosses, the ones you haven't beaten first, so you meet them all in three clears. Elites take turns the same way, and the codex says who takes turns on a stage.
• Blade skins, weapon forms, CONQUEST, TORMENT and relic feats are won on the new boss stages, and DEPTH counts the nine themes' 360 stages.
• Every theme fights to music of its own: THEME 1 keeps its harp, THEMES 2 and 3 get new harp tracks, and THEMES 4-9 new scores of their own.
• Pages name a theme by its number and place (THEME 5: THE COBRA WADI), and the codex picks one by number, 1 to 9.
• A run saved past stage 40 continues on stage 40, against the warden.

The field grows

Every theme opens on the same small field and grows every stage to its stage 40, about a column a stage up to stage 10 and three after, so its ruins, camps and landmarks come into view all the way through. A dark pixel ring runs out from the crystal as the floor widens. When the boss of stage 10, 20 or 30 falls, a crimson shockwave runs to the walls and kills every monster it touches, one by one, and the next stage opens under a letterbox with a slow pull-back.

• Every run lays a new random cave and rolls its own field size, from x0.85 to x1.15.
• THEMES 2, 5 and 8 end on wider fields than THEMES 1, 4 and 7, and THEMES 3, 6 and 9 on wider still.

Bosses and elites come alive

All 180 bosses and elites now move with animation of their own build: they crawl, stomp, slither, hover or swim, bosses strike, roar and collapse, and elites cast. They flinch from your cuts and turn as they walk. A boss climbs out of its door in two heaves, lunges at the crystal when it bites, and burns away from the feet up into rising embers. A soft pool of the place's glow breathes under each elite.

Sign towers

Every sign has its own light now: storm-blue SNARE, ghost-green TOMB, gold CROWN and void-violet SPIRAL beside the NOOSE's red, on its towers, casts, cut marks, ink, icons and the SIGNS page. The towers have new art, each with a magic circle turning under it. Standing towers come alive between blows: runes pulse, the noose swings, lightning arcs between the snare's rods, ghosts circle the tomb, embers rise, and everything brightens as the next blow nears.

Weapons

Every weapon now changes its look at every forge tier, like the sword: the scythe, hook, whip, spear, flail, daggers, greatsword, chakram and warhammer each have a hundred looks. All 34 blade skins can be worn on every weapon. A skin won is won for all of them, and each weapon keeps its own, picked from the new weapon row on the BLADE SKINS page. The forge's anvil shows the weapon you hold, and pointing at TIER UP shows its next look.

CASCADE

Every player now fights in one shared cave around the Heart. The crowd comes in from every side, any blade cuts any monster, and the whole table plays each stage together: everyone drafts, and the next stage opens once all are ready or the draft's time runs out.

• Elites parry, sidestep, lash and toll against every player's blade, and a guard is spent once for the whole table.
• On a slow or lossy connection, other players' monsters walk smoothly instead of stuttering or blinking out.
• A table plays to stage 10, 20, 30 or 40 (20 by default).

ONLINE or LOCAL

At launch the game now asks how you will play. ONLINE is the game as you know it, with cloud saves, leaderboards, ranked DAILY RIFT and reviews, on one record for now. LOCAL keeps up to three records that never leave this PC: no cloud save, leaderboards, reviews or gem shop, DAILY RIFT plays unranked, and CASCADE seats only other LOCAL players. The first launch finds your record in both. SETTINGS > RECORD names the record in play, and CHANGE RECORD switches.

• Settings are shared by every record: volume, keys, language and the rest.
• In the demo, records stay in the demo and never carry over to the full game.

For new players

• PACTS are open from the first level: no more level-100 lock. After your first run, the PACTS door shows how pacts work with a small animated demo.
• After the AUTO-cut lesson, the game teaches skills: the level globe's + shows where level points go, the SKILLS page walks you through the tree, and your first skill's slot shows the key that casts it.

Changes

• Levels cost more: 1,000 EXP for the first, then x1.25 a level up to 30, x1.2 up to 50 and x1.3 past it. Levels you have are kept.
• DAILY RIFT is one theme of 40 stages: three bosses drawn by the day, then a warden.
• The DEPTH board on RANKS ranks THEME x 100 + stage cleared, multiplied by what the run's pacts pay.
• Hovering a row on the stat sheet shows where its figure comes from: the sword, forge, gear, relics, each awakening card and the rest.
• Hovering CHAIN, BURN, SIGNS and the other damage lines on the results page and HISTORY says what each one counts.
• Discord no longer pops up after a clear or at the endings. It lives in SETTINGS.
• Lines that joined their parts with a middle dot now read as plain words, labels and brackets, in every language.

Performance

• Big floors run about twice as fast: the floor is drawn as a few baked meshes instead of thousands of tiles.
• Switching views and laying a new floor hitch less, and damage numbers cost less to draw.

Fixes

• Landmark animations play whole instead of being cut off at their edges: the Mother Bell's toll, the lighthouse beam, the spore geyser, the smokers, the fire pit, the colossus, the jellyfish siphon, the dust devil and the censer.
• The Hollow's waterfall no longer looks cut out, and five more pieces sliced by their frames are mended.
• KEEPSAKE HAND: the kept hand comes back only in the theme it fell in, no longer grows fall on fall past THEME 1, and a CASCADE table no longer hands it out twice.
• On a Mac, the demo keeps its own save and cloud sync instead of sharing the full game's.
• Thai on a Mac shows the spaces in times, figures, stage numbers and elite lines, and Thai words no longer break in half where a line wraps.
• French monster cards name a place without a broken "DE OUED".