Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
The dodging behaviours for all AI is something we still need to iron out, as it is still not triggering properly and so was not included in this patch. We have a strange issue to diagnose where the dodging enemy is moving as though stuck in mud... they do the dodge animation but remain on the spot, which as you can imagine is not effective, lol.
Last note - You might have noticed the download for this patch is huge; really sorry about that, guys! There is an optimization in Unity we needed to activate because it improved loading times for all assets, including up to 50% faster loading for dungeons, which of course is a great thing. But that bad part is it causes all the asset bundles to rebuild, meaning a full redownload of the game bundles is needed. However, this was just a once-off thing, so the good news is it should not need to happen again in the future.
We are delighted to add this gamemode for folks who always wanted a little more out of Blade & Sorcery than the default sandbox experience. 
Crystal Hunt was truly nuts for us to work on, because it was like dropping a new game on top of the established Blade & Sorcery game that you already know. The Warpfrog team really worked hard on this as we wanted to do justice with our final major content update. 
The most notable difference about the Dalgarian dungeons compared to Outpost is the sheer scale; you will notice the "rooms" are not just physically bigger in terms of structure sizes, but also much larger in terms of space, with more open layouts. 
A player could choose to go all-in on one skill branch and become the penultimate master of that element, for example being a Fire mage than incinerates all foes. Alternatively, a player might choose to dabble across a few different branches and diversify; perhaps you want to have some fire powers, but still enjoy the utilitarian versatility of being able to gravity glide. 
To get even crazier, a lot of the skills have synergies that stack with each other to create interesting effects. 
Remember, this is not even one of our 78 actual skills in the game! This is just an example of how a player can leverage the simulation factor of Blade & Sorcery to synergize skills and create totally new things and make really interesting character builds. 
We really want you to experience everything related to the golem in VR, so I will avoid saying too much here! 
A large asterisk I will place here is to warn you that while we have deep lore, the game does not hold you hand. It is not a "sit back and enjoy the story" type game with a narrator guiding or breaking things down for you, nor is the world and story events revolving around you. 
But on top of this, a player may also use inference to observe the world around them and come to conclusions about things, of which the game will not validate for you.
Last but not least, depending on how hardcore you want your lore experience to be, we also have ancient texts to discover in the game that are in the Dalgarian language. 
Final thought: we also realize that some players may not give a hoot about lore and simply want to play an action game - no problem! 
Players can also potentially find rare crystal shards in dungeon runs, which can be used to unlock new skills on currently unlocked skill branches.
We also have something completely new and unusual for Blade & Sorcery that we kept under wraps - a voiced NPC as the shopkeeper! (voiced by yours truly ːlunar2019piginablanketː)
We tried our best to avoid gamey mechanics like having upper tier weapons "deal more damage", since after all, a player should be allowed complete the game with a rusty dagger if they are so inclined. Instead, upper tier weapons will have other benefits, such as being able to hold an imbue charge for longer, increased reach, additional offensive spikes, or slicing through certain armours easier.
There is also a whole new mechanic to go along with 1.0 armour - Heavy armour will provide you with better physical protection, but lighter mage armour will allow you to cast spells faster. If you go all-in on mage gear, you will be slinging spells like crazy but you will have a "glass canon" type character. 
The Ruins was one of the earliest maps in the game, introduced back when the we were still using some store assets. This meant the textures always clashed with the rest of the game and looked ugly by comparison. 
I'm sure there will be some nostalgia for the old Ruins map, but the new map keeps the essence of the original - the verticality, the chandelier, the moody lighting, etc.
Not only were were beautifying and optimizing the old maps, but we wanted to create a sense of cohesion between them, to make these locations feel like they are all part of Byeth and not just random places in isolation.
It also gave us the opportunity to shake some of the old maps up!
Although any faction could potentially have any configuration of armour types, the different factions will tend to lean towards different strengths and weaknesses to provide a varied challenge. 
A little bonus to this new inventory system is that you can now see how your armour protection is stacking up, as well as how your armour impacts your spell casting speeds as mentioned earlier in the armour section.
If you are not playing the hardcore manual Dalgarian translation option, you will be able to see Dalgarian text that is translated to your own language here too.
As I say, you wont completely see the mechanics of this under the hood stuff but you will experience it in a nice and immersive simulation way. We also made this as moddable as possible for modders to add in their own status effects.
Did you know Steam has a character limit on the news? Lmao, they are probably thinking no sane person would hit that cap...
There are many more parts of the update that are not flagship features but absolutely worth mentioning!
Full Changelog here!
Deep in the mountains of Eraden, entrances to long lost Dalgarian ruins have Inexplicably revealed themselves, triggering what folk have begun referring to as The Crystal Hunt. Within weeks of the first entrance discovery, major factions across Eraden mobilized to compete in finding these ruins and securing the valuables within.
Each faction is motivated by their own agenda in the Crystal Hunt, something a player can choose to delve into if they wish by finding lore and piecing together the bigger picture. 
The player will choose the background for their character and how they want to begin. Perhaps you are a lowly Gravity mage, or a Mind mage with slow-motion, or perhaps you would like a challenge and begin with no magic at all! 
The Home map that Early Access players will be already familiar with will act as the hub between dungeon runs. Here the player can relax, visit the shop, equip new gear, or unlock new skills. 
Remember this thing? It has been driving players crazy since U10 with wondering what the heck this thing was. 
The Crystal Core itself is what unlocks a branch (the lowest branch) on the skill tree - Fire, Gravity, Lightning, Mind and Body. From here, players can use the lesser Crystal Shards they found in Dungeons to purchase skills within those branches. 
There are pros and cons to either direction, so this will be up to the player! One player might find it cool to be able to slow time, featherfall, and cast the odd fireball, making themselves diverse and a little bit good at everything, whereas another player might decide to go all-in on specialization and become a full blown Fire Mage; outstanding at incinerating foes but not so versatile in other non-combat situations.
This update is a big one, so you can imagine the hell we are in right now with bugs.
Everything is on fire? Why not.
Some unholy Cthulu creature decides to manifest in your game? Just another day.
But despair not, we are on it! The whole team are trying their best right now and are pushing really hard to focus on cleaning up the game into a playable state. We can do it!
Your pain has been acknowledged. We are absolutely dying to release more than anyone, believe me! ːamadeus_spookedː
Now, news time.
This is going to be a really fine balancing act, because we wanna show off lots of cool stuff but we are also dying to keep as much as we can a surprise so you guys can enjoy the experience for the first time in VR. ːlunar2019piginablanketː
The Dalgarians -- who they were and what were they all about. This will be a major hinge in the player's motivation while playing Crystal Hunt, as you explore the ancient Dalgarian ruins and gather lore to piece together a bigger picture of the world and events surrounding the Crystal Hunt.
When creating the Dalgarian dungeon biome, the environment and design team wanted to try something quite new for B&S by moving away from the familiar medieval style, which was mostly based on real world references - if you hadn't realized, Western Europe served as a huge inspiration for Eraden in architecture and design; medieval France, Celtic Ireland, etc.
The goals were to create a location that instilled feelings of discovery and exploration, so that entering a new room would be surprising, intriguing and impressive by its scale; something very awesome in VR!
An effort was also made to incorporate environmental storytelling. While not overt lore exposition, the idea is that the rooms themselves could be open to interpretation for the player to infer what kind of ancient civilization this was.
There are also miscellaneous and cosmetic changes coming to some of the Sandbox maps. 
Did you know Byeth was a moon? ːsteamdanceː
But it's not just Oron that makes an appearance in the sandbox maps. The Azure Star now makes an appearance too. 
That's it for this news, folks. Hope you guys are excited!
We were really, really adamant that we didn't wanna do a gamey skill tree that was nothing but boring number crunch, so this was non-negotiable for Warpfrog. 
In the beginning of the game, the player character is completely skill-less. That means all the spells and OP stuff you know from the years of Early Access Sandbox game are stripped from the player and the player is literally just a sword or archery warrior.
There are also a few multipath skills, such as having a certain tier of Fire and a certain tier of Gravity will unlock some new special combination skill. 
Some of the skills will be augmentations for other skills you have already unlocked. 
With so many new skills and effects in the game, if you were to unlock them all at the same time you might hardly recognize the EA game because there is just so much going on, lol. But for this reason we tried our absolute best to make it so no new skill changes how the game plays on a fundamental level. 
To give an example, we all know the regular fireball, but if one was to use the new skill "Remote Detonation", this allows player to explode the fireball mid air, so the controls are simply casting the fireball as usual and then the new part is pulling the trigger to make it explode. 
However, it is unlikely to be the case that a player would have everything unlocked all at the same time; it is not fully balanced right now, but the idea is that by the time an average player gets to the end of Crystal Hunt, they will more than likely have unlocked something like two full Skill Paths, plus some change. 
Of course if you kept doing dungeon runs in Crystal Hunt you could theoretically max out every Skill Path and become a master at everything. Surely some madlads will certainly do this, but the average player is unlikely to.
Now let's go a layer deeper! 
There are also some status effects for the Body Path skills, but we will leave that for you to discover yourself later.
Last little note, these skill trees are modder friendly! 
This was actually really freaking tricky for us, lol. 
The first pioneers who dared brave these halls unearthed a slew of archeological findings on the Dalgarians; incredible structures with magical integration like non-other. 
Within weeks, powerful factions of Eraden began mobilizing their forces in an attempt to seek out and secure the entrances to these Dalgarian chambers and their treasures within, occupying crumbling outposts of the old world as forward operating bases while they comb out across the landscape. 
Due to the corrupting effect of magic on humankind, unsanctioned magic in Eraden is illegal. As such, some such as the Queen of Eraden seek containment of the Crystals, whilst others like the magic-obsessed cult, The Eye, obsessively seeks its consumption.
Similarly for us, the use of environmental storytelling in the exploration of Dalgarian ruins will be based on your inferral of our environments. No one will come along and tell you that you are right or wrong, but something I am really secretly hoping and looking forward to is for there to be times when the community pool together their theories and discoveries about our world.
That means, break out your cipher! I'm actually not joking lol. ːwizardː
This has been a huge project undertaking for the environment team at Warpfrog, as they were tasked to build out an entirely new Dungeon on the same scope as Outpost, but unlike Outpost which is very medieval-inspired in design, the Dalgarian Dungeons required a full blown novel art direction to create something entirely new, ancient and mystical feeling.
The dungeon room pool size will be approximately akin to Outpost in room count; I believe at the the moment there is about Dalgarian 40 rooms compared to Outpost's 60. But one thing you will notice compared to Outpost is how absolutely massive some of these rooms are. 
You absolutely need to see these rooms in VR to appreciate the job the enviro team did at making them look gorgeous. As always, we are continuing to support and push PCVR to its limits.
How the Dalgarian Dungeon fits into the story and gameplay will be revealed when you play Crystal Hunt.
Then there are the much sought after Crystals Core themselves. 
In this way you could say that sorcerers who have a lot Crystal Shards may be more robust magicians, but those with Crystal Cores will be more powerful magicians.
Our skill tree is stuffed with actual content! ːpraisesunː 
The player starts off Crystal Hunt as a powerless character; even the basic lightning, fire and gravity spells you know from sandbox are stripped. 
To give an idea of how crazy we went with the skill tree, if you were to recreate the sandbox player as you would know it, that would account for approximately 20% of skill tree. The rest is new content. (I say approx because we are not finalized) It's madness, yes. 
There is enough content in the skill tree alone to justify its own news, so at a later date we can return to this and do a deep dive into skills with more previews. ːsteamdanceː
In the gif above please note that it is just an internal test of containers and loot. How it will be presented in the actual game is still tbd. The tests are working pretty well though and it feels nice opening containers and looting!
The shop will also be something you can invest your loot money in to upgrade the store and expand the purchase selection.
The Officer armour is particularly freaking hard to fight against as it is full coverage, minus some small gaps. This means unless you are particularly finessed with a blade, blunt weapons and magic (especially electricity!) are better for dealing with these guys. 
For the player, there are some gameplay mechanics coming with armours too. 
These are weapons covering just about everything, from swords, axes and polearms, to staffs and bows; finally we have different arrow types too!
"Tiered weapons" is referring to the weapon qualities which range from the lower poor quality weapons to fancy upper tier ones. However we are trying make all weapons functional - I am always harping on at Warpfrog about the concept that a player should be able to complete the game with a rusty dagger if they so choose. 
We always sought to avoid this, so instead of a very obvious mechanic such as better weapons = better damage, we are trying for a more latent benefit to higher tiers, such as "functional benefit"; while you could kill any enemy with a rusty dagger, the higher quality weapons may have functional appeal such as extended lengths, hilts, better piercing and penetration of leather, extra stabbing points, etc.
The Ruins sandbox map was the second map introduced into the game and was built from store bought Unity assets. 
This means there could be a spread of outfits with mix-matching in each faction, although you may be more likely to find armoured enemy in the Queen of Eraden's faction for example. 
How this translates to the gameplay is that enemy difficulty is now no longer tied to outfits; where before if you wanted to see armoured knights in Outpost, you always needed to play on hard difficulty. 
The importance of this was not completely evident until one day a player noted he was manually removing all his mods for U12.3 - not a big deal... until he pointed out he had 147 mods installed! ːsteamlaughcryː To that guy - this is for you, lol.
The full list of what will be included here will continue to be incomplete right up to release and is very much the "let's see" category.
Any date we give you right now is truly just an estimate based on paper calculations, so please don't be locked into thinking there is any definitive release date or believe any misinformation you might hear about this. 
Loading
