Metra just got a lot bigger...

Most of the new parts bite.

Three new lands. Seven mega bosses, one ruling each land. Seven merchants with stories, jobs and mercenaries for hire. A robot you build out of the pieces those bosses were carrying. And for the first time, you choose the route up the mountain.

In terms of content, this update is very very very close to what I want the full release to have. Long post again. Grab a drink.

TL;DR

• Choose your route. Set three dreamstones on the new altar in camp. Difficulty now follows how deep into the run a land sits.
• Three new lands: the Sunscorch Waste, the Labyrinth and Sunken Reaches.
• Seven mega bosses, one ruling each land, fought out in the open.
• D4R10, a new companion built from the pieces the mega bosses carry.
• Seven merchants with 147 jobs, mercenaries for hire, blessings and nine new cartridges.
• Morale and fear, corruption, real armor and a save from killing blows.
• Six item sets, 20+ new pieces of gear, rune crafting and forged rune sockets.
• Crash-safe saves, no more mid-fight save stutter, and a long list of balance changes and fixes.

Spoiler warning. Past this point the post names every new boss, shows what they drop, and touches on story: D4R10, Gothar's past and the Frozen Peaks finale. If you'd rather find it all out on the mountain, stop reading here.

Dreamstones: you pick the road

There is a new altar in camp. Set three dreamstones on it, in order, and they become the first three lands of your next run. Frozen Peaks is always the last climb. The altar remembers your route.

You start with three stones — Elderglade Forest, Rainy Road and Cavernous Depths. The rest you earn:

• Sunscorch Waste — the Elderglade Forest boss drops it the first time you beat it. Earning it is also what reveals the altar.
• The Labyrinth — dropped by the Cavernous Depths boss.
• The Sunken Reaches — waiting for you at the end of the Rainy Road.

Difficulty now follows where a land sits in your run, not which land it is. Put Cavernous Depths first and it plays like a first land. Put the forest third and it bites like a third one. Enemy levels, arena budgets, wave counts, pack sizes and which heavy hitters are allowed to show up all climb with depth.

Three new lands

The Sunscorch Waste

Open sandr, long sightlines and a wind that rarely stops. The sun takes your energy faster than you can get it back — energy only recovers properly while you stand in the water — and the gnolls know exactly where the water is.

Gnolls hunt in packs, nine kinds of them, and they fight like a pack: they hit harder with packmates beside them and scatter the moment the pack breaks. Kill the shaman first. The guardian bellows until it is the only thing you can fight. The trapper snares the open ground. The berserker never runs — thin his pack and he just gets angrier. And break line of sight all you like: the hyena keeps coming.

• Coconuts and palm trees, storm-glass to craft four new weapons from, and Sabra Glassfoot's camp.
• Two new pit bosses under the dunes: Voidhusk, who crosses the arena three leaps at a time and seeds the floor with void, and Burrowfang, who digs three linked dens and only comes up to bite.

The Labyrinth

Somebody built this, and whoever it was left their guards running. Narrow corridors, dead ends, lodestone pillars as the only landmarks worth trusting — and ambushes waiting in the dead ends. There's a rat warren in here too. Don't step in it.

Bronze, steel, dwarven, overgrown and molten golems keep the maze, along with minotaurs who have had a very long time to learn every turn. Miha Threadwright is in here as well. He has been mapping it for years. He is certain he is nearly out.

The Sunken Reaches

The old Sunken Reaches was really just Cavernous Depths wearing a different name, and I wasn't happy with it. It is now a drowned pirate trench: flooded channels, shipwrecks, spilled cargo and coral reefs. You wade at half speed. The pirates don't.

Pirates steal gold on hit — you'll see it fly off you. The way out is no longer a boss kill: you hold the road against four waves, and the captain arrives last with his bodyguards. Trent Saltcrow dives the wrecks here, and the four kinds of coral you'll find are how you forge new rune sockets onto your weapons (more on that below).

New pit bosses

Voidhusk and Burrowfang hold the desert pits, and a lesser Lich now guards the pit in the Frozen Peaks — for a master it has never seen.

Seven mega bosses

Every land now has a ruler, and none of them live in an arena. Mega bosses are overworld fights. Finish a merchant's story and they hand you a contract: the land's mega boss, called out into the open. It comes for you across the map, with its own battle theme. The Arch Lich is the exception — Vessa names it once you've cleared the pit in the Frozen Peaks, on every run.

• Centaur Warchief
• Ogre Chieftain
• Demon Destroyer
• The Cyclops
• Minotaur Warlord
• Naga Matriarch
• The Arch Lich

Walls are not cover against them — every one of them breaks terrain. And they pay well: 1000 gold, large health potions, runes, two levels for every hero in the party, a big score bonus… and the piece of D4R10 each one carries.

D4R10

Something fell on this mountain long before you did, and the seven biggest beasts on Metra have been wearing the pieces. Each mega boss drops its part until you own it. Bring all seven to Pandora and she puts together D4R10.

He joins as a new companion and levels like the others — but he has no techniques of his own. He copies yours. Six slots, filled in camp from his own Indigo Gauntlet, the four companions' base weapons (Brin's sword, Ana's bow, Lilith's spell, Gothar's hammer) and any companion skill you've bought from Anton. One directive: protect what cannot protect itself.

Seven merchants, seven stories

Every land now has its own merchant, with their own stock, their own voice and their own problems:

• Bram Waxwood — bows (and now boomerangs), Elderglade Forest
• Teodar Emberhand — swords and axes, Rainy Road
• Orrik Deepvein — helmets and hammers, Cavernous Depths
• Sabra Glassfoot — boots and rings, Sunscorch Waste
• Miha Threadwright — runes, The Labyrinth
• Trent Saltcrow — salvage (some of it hums), The Sunken Reaches
• Vessa Rime — coats and plate, Frozen Peaks

They have work for you. Each merchant has a seven-step story, a pool of everyday jobs and a contract at the end — 147 requests in total. Hunts (sometimes of a corrupted, over-levelled beast), fetches, deliveries, places to find. A job is tied to the land you take it in, and the game makes sure what you need actually exists in that land.

• Every story ends in a new cartridge — details just below.
• Hire mercenaries from every merchant. Example... Bram will lend you a wolf for 200 gold or a bear for 400. The new Leadership cartridge raises how many you can keep.
• Blessings. Bring the right companion and the merchant blesses the whole party: Bram and Lilith, Orrik and Gothar, Teodar and Brin, Sabra and Ana.
• Locked caches. Every merchant keeps one, and any golden key opens them. Keys come from contracts and from locked chests, which now show up in most lands.
• Quest markers on the map, and the objective tracker follows merchant jobs.

Marks and new cartridges

Hunter's Mark brings a new mechanic: every hit stacks a mark, and at five marks (four, then three as you level it) they detonate — and every mark payload you carry fires at once. Loosed adds a heavy piercing shot. Rockfall drops Orrik's weight on top.

• Quenched — every blow that lands on you stacks armor for a few seconds.
• Glass Underfoot — every tile you cross stacks movement speed and crit. Stand still and it bleeds off.
• Cairnfrost — every kill stacks armor and knockback resistance.
• Lodestone — every hit stacks a slow. Enough of them and the fast things stop being fast.
• The Humming — hits leave a damaging hum that spreads to whatever stands too close.
• Leadership — more mercenaries at once.

Morale and fear

Enemies now have Morale, and it breaks. Your hits drain it, watching allies die nearby drains it, and dread drains it. At zero a unit panics: it deals half damage and runs for a few seconds before it steadies itself. Bigger deaths scare more — an elite going down shakes the pack far more than a grunt.

• The undead feel no fear. The three undead bosses radiate dread instead.
• Mega bosses have enormous reserves of nerve. Don't count on scaring one.
• Your own Morale works the same way.
• Want to be the scary one? Intimidation now lives on gear: Horned Helmet, Damned Ram, Bear Mask, Barbed Armor, Horned Boots, Big Axe, Spiked Maul, Blastcleaver, Skyfall Hammer and more — plus the new Dread Rune.

Corruption

Some of what walks Metra is wrong. You won't meet it on the first stretch of a climb — but the deeper you go, the more of it there is.

• Blighted — swollen with rot. Slow, but it takes far more killing.
• Frenzied — closes far faster than it should. Fragile, if you can meet it.
• Hexed — something else is casting through it. Kill it first.
• Ascendant — bosses only, and only deep into a run. You'll know it when you see it.

Corrupted enemies glow from below and carry better loot and more gold. What's causing it? The journal has questions. I'm not answering them yet.

Armor that means something

• Armor is a real stat now. One point protects against slash, pierce and blunt at once. Sixteen enemies carry it, and everything you have comes from your gear.
• Nothing is immune any more. Resistance used to be able to cancel an attack completely. It's capped now.

Item sets, new gear and crafting

Six item sets. Wear the helmet and the armor from the same set and a bonus switches on: dragon fire, homing Dudu eggs, a Krakra egg after every dash, Scorpion venom that bursts at five stacks, a Tek combat drone, a Void sphere that drags enemies together. The tooltip shows how many pieces you're wearing.

• New gear: Fire Boots (every dash ends in a fireball), Heartwood Harness (a treant wakes up to fight for you — fire hurts more, though), Druid's Hood, Wizard's Hat, Frog Mask, Miner's Helmet, Golden Fox Mask, Bear Mask, Chachi's Helmet, the Crown, Iron and Full Iron Helmets, and Chest Armor in four colours.
• Storm-glass weapons from the desert: Sunglass Shiv, Sunglass Edge, Glassfall Bow and Shatterstorm.
• Dragon's Gland is redesigned and now Mythic.
• New recipes: cloth from rope, bandanas and capes dyed with spores, chest armor riveted over a cape, horned helmets.
• Runes are crafted now — cut into a Rune Blank at the forge for coral and gold. Over forty rune recipes.
• Forge new rune sockets onto your weapons. Spend a coral at the forge: Kelpcoral for a Novice socket, Tidecoral for Adept, Bloodcoral for Elite, Suncoral for Master. Up to four sockets per weapon.
• Toolwright's Cache — one in every land now, usually sealed behind walls. It drops crafting parts and set pieces.
• Equipment you pick up goes straight into a free slot.

Loot that feels like loot

Chests pop their lid and burst open. Boss drops, mega boss rewards, arena rewards and the Toolwright's Cache reveal their loot one piece at a time, worst to best, each with a rising note — and a legendary out of a chest shakes the screen. New reveal sounds too.

Boomerangs, rebuilt

Boomerangs fly like boomerangs now: out, a hang where they grind whatever they're caught in, and back to your hand. The cooldown starts when you catch it, not when you throw it. New throw animation, new grip — and Bram sells them.

Achievements, music and story

• 14 new achievements — one for reaching each land, one for each mega boss, and one for assembling D4R10. Moe is now the Arch Lich. Fate Spinner and Legendary Smith need 500 instead of 1000.
• New music for the Sunscorch Waste, the Labyrinth, the Sunken Reaches and the Rainy Road — and mega bosses get their own battle theme.
• Gothar's fallen camp. Somewhere in Elderglade Forest is the camp where his king fell. Hint - Take Gothar there.
• The Frozen Peaks finale now runs through Vessa: clear the pit, tell her, and she names the thing under the mountain.
• Journal entries for every new land, for D4R10 and for the corrupted.

Everything else

Saves

• Saves are crash-safe now. Every write goes to a temporary file first, and the previous save is kept as a backup — a crash or a full disk can no longer wipe a profile.
• A damaged save shows up as "Damaged save" instead of being quietly overwritten.
• The game no longer saves in the middle of a fight. That was the stutter some of you noticed on kills. It saves at safe moments instead: between levels, in camp, when you pause and when you quit.
• Creating a profile in a slot you had just deleted did nothing — fixed.

Balance

• Enemies now spawn at full health. Anything above level 1 used to start with its level-1 health bar. That was a bug and it's fixed, so the later lands will feel noticeably tougher. If it's too much, tell me.
• Enemy damage now scales with their level. A level-4 enemy used to hit like a level-1 one.
• Many enemies were attacking at half their intended rate because of a cooldown bug — fixed.
• Co-op bonus level per enemy is back to 0. The Brute's armor was reduced. Some units regenerate less health. The giant rock golem shows up less often.
• The Arch Lich summons a wider variety of undead. Better Healing Aura rune. Pixcalibur no longer drops.

Fixes

• Dead units sometimes not disappearing — fixed (hopefully)
• Bow hands breaking while wearing armor — fixed
• A stacking status effect bug and some perks showing absurdly large values — fixed
• Cutscene camera fade on scene change, companion commands and command positioning — fixed and improved
• Travel events picking the wrong party units — fixed. Events no longer cost meta coins.
• Arrow travel and origins improved, overgrown golems aim better
• Summoned units are coloured so you can tell whose they are
• Merchant spawn positions, duplicate cartridge icons, missing collision on some grass tiles, the tombstone trap animation, and a forge that stopped working when a level had two — fixed
• Companion names showing raw text keys, and Snap repeating his first-meeting lines on every visit — fixed

All the new content is translated into all eleven languages. Same deal as last time: if a line reads wrong in your language, tell me on the translation thread and I'll fix it.

Some honest words

The last update was about who you play with. This one is about the mountain itself — where you go, who you meet on the way, and what's waiting at the top of each land. It's the most content I've added in one go, which also means there are more things that can break. If something feels off, too hard, too easy or just plain wrong, please tell me. I read everything.

A huge thank you to everyone supporting the game during Early Access, and to my friends who keep testing build after rough build.

If this one lands for you, or not — please tell me what you think. I'm one person with no marketing budget, and a couple of sentences from you move the game further than anything I could buy. Come say hi on the Steam forums or on Discord.

Put a dreamstone on the altar. Bring a golden key. And watch out for the Mega Boss!

See you on the mountain.

Filip