Blade & Sorcery News

Hello mates! Warpfrog team have a new bugfixing patch for you, along with some optimizations and improvements to AI behaviors.

Fixes in this patch address a wide range of issues such as the exploits where you could duplicate items, to full-blown nasty bugs such as crystals having a chance to fall through the ground when physics is set to set to low.

There are also a bunch of AI fixes included in this patch. As mentioned before, AI is hell for us because we have a very complicated system of behavior trees that have way too much cross-branch dependencies and spaghetti code which creates a system where one tiny thing changes here, one massive thing breaks over there, and a ton of iteration time in between.
This was just the way it all organically happened from constantly developing the game, adding a ton of new staff to the team to the previously one-man project over time, and changing the roadmap scope over years which added things to the game that were never planned for, etc.

The most major thing that would fix these type of issues would be to start from scratch with the lessons learned to develop a nice new clean code, and that is exactly what we will be doing when we develop our next game on the new Thunder Road 2 framework. However for B&S we are stuck, so the best we can do is keep tweaking what we have and try to iron out the worst issues.

One of the most notorious issues to be addressed in this patch was related to the AI getting too close to player, sometimes even glitching into the player. It may not be perfect as it is still a WIP but an easy first step fix we took to alleviate this issue was to remove the tiny weapons from AI where they could never effectively find the right attacking distance in VR; for example the little hammer.

Another good rangefinding fix was addressing an issue with shield bash where shield enemy would constantly get in the player's face to try and rangefind the bash attack as the primary behaviour, instead of only bashing as a secondary circumstantial behavior when player got in the AI's face. Before now, if you were fighting a shield enemy they were most likely constantly in your face trying to shield bash you which was the opposite behavior than intended; the bash was supposed to keep you away from the enemy.

These two fixes help a bunch, but where things get hairy is in waves of multiple enemy, as AI rangefinding issues tend to get compounded when multiple enemy are present. To help, we amended a behavior for AI where those were not actively attacking the player will now hang back and not crowd the player.
Multiple enemies will still close in to attack player, but those who are not actively attacking will get out of the way rather than just standing there idling in your face. This will hopefully help reduce the sensation of AI crowding the player for no reason in group fights.

Meanwhile 1v1 the AI seems to be doing well and ranges all seem to be good, and attack pattern seems to be good and working as expected. The later factions (Eraden, The Eye) will attack with more ferocity than the early easy factions (Wildfolk, Outlaws).



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.

A nice plus for AI in this patch is that some missing death animations were restored! It was one of those things where a "simple" change somewhere totally innocuous caused a ripple bug effect to cause regression and it had disabled death animations.



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.

Cheers guys, full changelog below!




Version 1.0.3.576

• Added initial enriched presence for Steam
  
• Increased audio sample rate SFX/Music to improve audio quality
  
• Resetting settings in the option book will save options with the default value
  
• Added some logging and fallbacks if the game cant write to the log file
  
• Added SpectatorHide layer which the spectator camera cannot see.
  
• The inventory artifact mesh preview is now invisible in the spectator camera. But is visible once grabbed
  

• Fixed Navmesh issues in Collapsed Ceiling/SewerGate/Castle_10
  
• Fixed Transi_Castle_16 Rope rotating when the LOD changes
  
• Fixed T1 Lightning crystal falling through the ground in home on Low Physics quality
  
• Fixed items loading the wrong itemId when spawned via ItemData
  
• Fixed bucklers improperly positioned when worn
  
• Fixed error with archery target and archery target support not showing in inventory
  
• Fixed water settings refreshing too often, spamming the log file
  
• Fixed the skip message SFX not being linked to the UI audio slider
  
• Fixed Eraden Tunic nerfing the player's focus regen
  
• Fixed reveal decals not working on npcs when their ethnicity is changed
  
• Fixed missing characters on UIs with handwritten fonts on asian languages
  
• Fixed mod option tooltips not closing when a options' category is closed
  
• Fixed metallic props and weapons being too dark
  
• Fixed warbow orientation when held in the right hand
  
• Fixed citadel bird spawner facing the wrong way
  
• Fixed colliders on scaffolding in UndergroundZipline preventing you from going into the scaffolding
  
• Fixed some collision issues in CoastalFort
  
• Fixed collider on Museum ocean so it cant be walked on
  
• Fixed incorrect flowmap texture used on fire imbue trail vfx
  
• Fixed bug with some ethnic groups eyes not being able to change color in character select
  
• Fixed storm beam vfx flickering
  
• Fixed some typos in the lore
  
• Fixed eyelashes using old shader, they now use TR/Litmoss
  
• Fixed tutorial stone in home using old shader, now uses TR/Litmoss
  
• Fixed male and female shirt textures stretching
  
• Fixed small stone sword holder orientation being wrong in the shop
  
• Fixed the journal not being lit properly in some instances
  
• Fixed new characters in character creation having the inventory of a previous character
  
• Fixed an issue where saving a new character wont refresh the character slot
  
• Fixed the gold death penalty causing all gold to always be lost
  
• Fixed currencies not being reset on death
  
• Fixed multiple cheats carrying over from sandbox to crystalhunt when switching characters
  
• Fixed being able to duplicate items in the item book
  
• Fixed the players eyes looking at nothing when close to the mirror
  
• Fixed spectator cam not enable book UIs after changing level
  
• Fixed being able to store broken parts of items
  
• Fixed NRE when cloning null content states
  
• Fixed issue with the shopkeeper not burning
  
• Fixed incorrect, broken mercenary shoulders appearing in shop
  
• Fixed the item book being empty if the category is null
  
• Fixed the game attempting to load old saves from before 1.0 and logging it as a error
  

• Build size reduction from removing duplicate assets
  
• Added LODs to particle effects so they fade out/disappear when you are far away from them
  
• Optimsed many particle effects to reduce their memory impact
  
• Optimised infuser VFX to hopefully reduce crashes
  
• Asset bundle optimisations
  

• Fixed unconscious creatures becoming intimidated.
  
• Karate chop always scares at least one additional creature
  
• When in hyperfocus you move faster
  
• Ranged Expertise will bounce projectiles off walls instead of going through them
  
• Fixed movement speed multiplier on swords slowing you down
  
• Heatwave shouldnt stagger if the creatures already burning.
  
• Fixed boost jump resetting when you reload the spell
  

• Lowered the number of enemies in the eye home invasion wave.
  
• Lowered Golem explosion radius
  
• Fixed issues which can break the golem fight
  
• Prevent staggering if the golem is already stunned
  
• Prevent the golem from exploding without the crystal being pulled out
  
• Fixed issue with effects not stopping in some circumstances
  
• Fixed issue being unable to respawn if you die while climbing the golem
  
• Lowered meteor damage to player
  
• Fixed the secret ending being solvable with only one fuse
  
• Fixed the infuser orbs not making you ungrab any of the orbs before they despawn
  
• Fixed being able to store items in inventory while they are in the infuser or skill tree holders
  
• Fixed your hands still holding onto the infuser orbs if you take out the ungrab the orbs when the crystal is taken out the infuser
  
• Fixed gravity push knocking the crystal out the infuser
  
• Fixed errors when loading and unloading the tutorial dungeon
  

• Removed very small weapons from dungeon enemies to prevent them from getting up too close
  
• Exclude shield bash ranges from min and max melee ranges. Significantly improves the behaviour of shield enemies, prevents them getting super close
  
• Fixed Shopkeeper movement issues in some situations
  
• Fix death animations not playing properly
  
• Prevent creatures playing death animationss if inert or destabilized when killed
  
• Prevent creatures not engaged in melee from advancing in and hugging the player
  

• Add begin transaction event to shop
  
• Made skill load events static
  
• Fixed issue with SDK manikinproperty scriptable objects not being treated as equal to the base game ones. It will now check it based on the asset name
  
• Fixed overriding ethnicity in creature tables and waves jsons not working
  
• Made some methods on the golem virtual
  
• Brains can load a subclass of a module types, allowing for extended brains modules
  
• Avoid NRE when the playerhand has no ragdoll hand
  
• Added a public setter for the Spectator.LockedTransform
  
• Added automatically calculating the defaultValueIndex for mod options based on default values on the method parameter/field/property
  

Hello mates, Baron here! Another patchload of bugfixes today from the Warpfrog team, addressing a bunch of issues raised by the community.

Some notable inclusions --

Players who spent crystal shards to upgrade and then accidentally died on Home map would lose their shards. This bug really sucked, so I'm sorry about that for anyone who unfortunately suffered this!

Players are now immune from Airstrike fall damage. Players looking to test out their new skill would jump off a cliff only to find they died on impact. ːpontius_angryː Now it operates as it always should have.

Some T4 weapons (Slaughter Sword, Noble's Dagger) were not appearing in the generation pool at Baron's Bounty, meaning no matter how many times you visited the weapons would never be for sale - they should be appearing now.

There was a bug for gold loss upon death where the player was losing their entire gold instead of only partial gold loss; it must have felt like playing hardcore difficulty! This is now fixed.

Full changelog of fixes below!

---

Unrelated to this patch but related to bugs, I also wanted to mention --

If you have played U11/U12 you might have felt the AI seemed a bit derpy in 1.0 by comparison.... You are not crazy!

We are still exploring this, but it seems we suffered from regressive AI bugs that are lobotomizing some of the AI's behaviors; notably AI not dodging, not using their shields properly, being unable to parry and riposte, and the very annoying "AI hugs you to death" rangefinding issue returns. ːeagleangryː

These were AI issues that we ironed out in the "animation overhaul" efforts back in U11, so it's annoying as hell to see them back! With so many moving parts in 1.0, the slow drip of tweaking code over time meant these issues slowly and stealthily reintroduced themselves. It's the kind of stuff that goes unnoticed because it happens so gradually that it is like watching a plant grow,. It's only when you can A/B compare the updates that things jump out!

Anyway, just wanted to let you guys know we are aware and looking into a fix!

[h3]Crystal Hunt[/h3]

• Updated inventory tutorial videos
  
• Fixed some typos in multiple languages related to the spelling of "Dalgarian"
  
• Fixed duplication bug when swapping inventory pages while grabbing an item in the inventory
  
• Fixed issues with the golem not stunning when it should
  
• Added missing T4 greatsword and dagger to the shop loot table
  
• Fixed issue with the player model breaking if they died while climbing the golem
  
• Fixed issues which can break golem fight
  
• Fixed gamemode gold death penalty causing all gold to be lost
  
• Fixed lore typos in English translation
  
• Fixed gold/shards not resetting on death
  
• Fixed item book duplication glitch
  
• Fixed outpost dungeons not using Very Large length for difficulty 4
  
• Fixed issue with golem crystal being storeable before the player kills the golem
  

[h3]Sandbox[/h3]

• Added Very Large outpost dungeon length to Sandbox on the mapboard
  

[h3]Skills[/h3]

• The player is immune to fall damage during airstrike, its reenabled after 0.5s
  

[h3]Modding[/h3]

• Fixed modded crystal merging
  
• Fixed issue with ItemIds in ItemData not overriding ItemIds on the prefab consistently when spawning the item
  
• Made lore easier to mod via public methods
  
• Allow calling MergeCrystal directly for rudimentary cross-tree merge support
  
• Fixed errors when modded skill tree orbs are null
  
• Fixed ModsMenu event firing incorrectly.
  
• OnLocalGolemSet is now a static event, not a static Action
  
• Fix NRE with ThunderEntity.GetCenter
  
• Fix missing status duration on Thunderbolt
  

[h3]Fixes[/h3]

• Fixes to prevent arcwire/teslawires causing glitchy decapitations
  
• Fixed memory leak with the skybox not being unloaded from dungeons
  
• Changed currencies so that they are only serialised to disk when the players inventory is saved
  
• Fixed issues where dying while climbing would cause the player to be disconnected from their body
  
• Prevent creatures breaking if spawned in shop
  
• Lowered vertical rope slide speed to prevent players from dying due to fall damage
  
• Optimised loading some json by a avoiding expensive operations that weren't necessary
  
• Fixed mesh issues with Ascent, MiningHub, Townsquare, LostCove
  
• Fixed waterfall in SewerMaintenance
  
• Added items to Museum and Temple
  
• Fixed Observatory Support having no colliders
  
• Fixed one sided texture in Market
  
• Fixed bad granary hole
  
• Male Officer armor neck protector returns!
  
• EndTower optimizations
  
• Fixed CoastalFort causing a progression blocker due to out of bounds collider
  
• Added colisionHandler to Trapdoors
  
• Fixed negative collider in Main Menu
  
• Adjusted colliders for t4 short sword
  
• Long axes texture fixes
  
• Update VFX assets data files
  
• Many particle effects memory usage was optimized
  
• Fix duplicate charge sapping vid on skill tree
  
• Fixed Culling between Museum and GatheringHall
  

Hi!
Kospy there as Baron is taking a break today ːsteammockingː

A minor update has been released today (1.0.1) to fix some major issues with the 1.0 release.
Minor update should not break any mods, so no worries about this.

If you are using the HTC Vive controllers, please note that the binding changed to fix an issue with hyper focus being unable to be used on this controllers. The new binding also improve how we open the menu and I hope it would also improve life of HTC Vive players (the controller lacking two buttons it's all about finding the less painful workaround). See the new bindings below that I lovely did using paint :p

Changelog for 1.0.1:

• Fixed issue with currencies not being refunded when you die in home/shop
  
• Fixed issue with the golem head crystal being storable in the player inventory before its been pulled out the golem
  
• Moved bloom intensity and post processing profile under graphics section
  
• Removed debug symbols from Oculus uploads
  
• Fixed Post Processing colour grade profiles
  
• Fix for modded book categorys not loading icons
  
• Fixed HTC Vive wands slow motion not working
  
• Fixed PressToMove for Vive wands missing in the options
  
• Fixed duplication bug when swapping pages on the inventory
  
• Fixed race condition causing a hang when loading save files or container contents
  
• Updated Vive wand bindings to allow hyperfocus to work
  

New HTC Vive binding:

Hello mates, The Baron here carrying the good word from KospY and the Warpfrog team.

How can this possibly be... the day has arrived. Blade & Sorcery 1.0 is now available! ːamadeus_happyː

What a journey, guys... From a one man project started by KospY to a studio of +20 fulltime developers. From a little indie arena sandbox to the beginnings of a fantasy IP.

All of us at Warpfrog are blown away by the events of the past 5 years, and we want to truly thank all of you guys who supported the game in Early Access. We carry some cynicism for common practices in the modern game industry, so when Warpfrog was founded we pledged to reject what we always hated as gamers ourselves and do things on our own terms.

Through your support, you guys let us remain independent from shareholders and publishers, and enabled the studio to become the truest and most authentic version of itself.

Now lets set the celebrations aside as you have waited long enough; let's get into the 1.0!

[h3]Before you begin[/h3]

If you are moving from Early Access to the 1.0 Update, do yourself a favour and solve your troubleshooting issues before you they begin -

Remove all of your U12 mods!

U12 mods will not work on 1.0, so as usual, mods will need an update.




As a caution I should warn that anything past this point may be considered a spoiler for those who wanted to play the update as a blind experience! Be warned!

[h2]Crystal Hunt Game Mode[/h2]

The all new Progression Mode is now in the game - start as a lowly warrior or mage and increase your character's power by unlocking new skills.

Find loot in the dungeons to buy and sell weapons and armor in a physical store.

Delve deep into the lore which gives context to the events of Crystal Hunt and world of Byeth. Uncover the secrets of the ancient Dalgarians!



We are delighted to add this gamemode for folks who always wanted a little more out of Blade & Sorcery than the default sandbox experience.

Staying true to the Warpfrog way and our beliefs on game design, this is not a hand-holding experience. However, Crystal Hunt will give motivation for the player to progress and develop through the game, as well as now having a definitive game ending to strive for.

Your Crystal Hunt character will be separate from your Sandbox one. We added some option goodies on character creation so you can customize your game and difficulty level; for example you can tweak the damage received or dealt modifiers, determine if Dalgarian language is automatically translated into your language, or enable death consequences if you please, such as losing gold or even permadeath.



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.

We hope you like it!

[h2]Dalgarian Dungeon[/h2]

The Dalgarian Dungeon is an entirely new dungeon biome to explore, revolving around the ancient race of Dalgarians; a highly advanced and magical people, now extinct.



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.

This should give a different vibe to exploring the Dalgarian Dungeon as compared to Outpost, which has a more linear sense of progression through it.

[h2]Skill Tree[/h2]

Your Crystal Hunt character will start off as a no-skilled warrior or petty mage. Prepare to have the rug pulled from beneath you when you realize how complacent you have likely become to being OP in sandbox mode!

Over the course of Crystal Hunt, you will earn the ability to unlock skills, steadily increasing your power. These skills correlate to the 5 branches on the Skill Tree - Fire, Gravity, Lightning, Body and Mind.



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.

Worth noting - although there is an absolute ton of skills, the idea is not that a player would have all 78 skills unlocked at the same time. If you did this you would be so unbelievably OP and your game absolutely chaotic with so many compounding skill effects, lol.

Our estimate is that a player will likely have two fully unlocked skill trees the time they reach the end of the game, or one tree plus a couple of other random skills. In theory, a player could continue to play Crystal Hunt and unlock everything (and some players surely will) but our intent was playing Crystal Hunt with a specific build, and then giving yourself the replay value to go back and play gain with a whole new build playstyle.

[h2]New Skills[/h2]

The madness.. the sheer madness... Crystal Hunt has a grand total number of 78 skills to be unlocked.

Each of our skills are playable game features; we avoided anything that would have been "gamey" like +5 damage, or +10 health, etc. The skills are actually things you can do or have an impact the gameplay somehow.



To get even crazier, a lot of the skills have synergies that stack with each other to create interesting effects.

For example, a player might unlock 3 separate skills; Gravity Bubble to create a bubble where enemies are weightless, Hyperfocus where time moves in slow motion but you do not, and Dilation Bubble which slows time on objects passing through a gravity bubble (like arrows).

These are three separate skills, but when you combine all these skills together, you will find a synergy that is unique! The combined effects create a timestop type of effect, as you can see here --



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.

Creative players will have a blast mix and matching skills to find all new off-skill tree effects, and I guarantee that you guys will find lots of combinations we never even dreamed of.

This is in beauty part of B&S being a simulation game!

[h2]New Golem enemy[/h2]

One of the many secret things we kept close to our chest before the trailer drop was this beauty, affectionately named "Hector" by the community.



We really want you to experience everything related to the golem in VR, so I will avoid saying too much here!

However I will say that the golem is huge and fully physical, so if you were wondering - yes it is climbable!

[h2]Lore[/h2]

A huge ask from players over the years has been for the introduction of lore to give a grounding and context to the gameplay of Blade & Sorcery.

We are beyond delighted to have finally delved into this and add depth to the world of Byeth!



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.

A player can find lore scattered throughout Crystal Hunt, which they can collect to piece together the bigger picture of the world and its events. There is a lot to find... At one point there was some genuine concern that our lead designer Shrubokrant may have legitimately been writing a novel, lol.



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.

Our Art Director Glitch skirted with a descent into madness on this, adding micro details to the world to make sure it was as cohesive as possible with the lore. For example, the coins in the game have the face of an ancient king that you may read about in some lore.

But who will get this??? Haha, even if some players will never notice such small details, we feel it will be absolutely awesome for those who are into this type of attention to detail and do! That is very much our vibe.

The team also went all-in with the portrayal of the Dalgarians. When it came to Dalgarian environment design, cdmpants and his Environment Team really sat down and laid out a society that made sense. If this was a real society, the Dalgarian dungeons would not just be a collection of random rooms; everything should have served a purpose for them.



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.

To crack this language would require a player to literally decipher it themselves in a throwback to the hardcore era of 90s-esque dungeon crawlers that involved paper maps. It is not some Zodiac killer level cryptography lol, but should be exciting for folks who are into this type of thing.

However, we realize how hardcore this is and also that there is a great inconvenience due to the VR headset factor, so we have a difficulty option to automatically translate for players who just wanna enjoy an action game without a pen and paper, lol. Automatic translation of Dalgarian language is the default for the game and the manual translation option is just an added layer for the hardcore madlads out there who want to be fully immersed in the experience.



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!

Our lore is there, but a player can choose to take Crystal Hunt at face value and just blast through it, enjoying the action, unlocking skills, finding loot, etc. No worries, you can do this and you will still be able to finish the game.

Meanwhile players who dive deep into the lore:




[h2]Loot[/h2]

Had you ever found a treasure chest in U12 Outpost only to be crushed to find it was non-interactable? No longer!

Throughout the Crystal Hunt dungeons, players will find loot in the form of coins or valuables, sometimes hidden in side-room chests, sometimes on shelves, or sometimes hidden cunningly in the environment.



Players can also potentially find rare crystal shards in dungeon runs, which can be used to unlock new skills on currently unlocked skill branches.

Finding these bonus crystal shards in the wild is truly satisfying.... there is something very rewarding about it on a primitive level, as you will see. Lyneca refers to this as inducing some kind of dormant "loot goblin" part the brain, and you know what... he is 100% right! ːgoblinː


[h2]Shop[/h2]

What would all that loot be without somewhere to spend it!

Crystal Hunt introduces a new shop location for the player to visit, where the player can sell loot, and buy new weapons and armours.

As always, we wanted to avoid as much gamey abstraction as possible, so the shop is an actual physical experience where you can take things from a shelf to look at or try them out before purchasing, then take them to a counter when you are ready to buy.



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)

The shopkeeper is facially animated, with reactive voice lines to try give him a bit of life and make the shopping experience a little varied each time.




[h2]New Weapons[/h2]

1.0 comes with a grand total of 76 weapons, not including things like arrows, quivers, throwing pouches or props. ːamadeus_spookedː

Tiered weaponry is also finally implemented into the game, so Crystal Hunt will have a progression of gear to purchase.



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.

Meanwhile, blunt weaponry will be more effective against armoured enemy, whilst blade will be better for slicing skin.

[h2]New Armors[/h2]

There are now a total of 90 individual armour pieces that comprise of 10 full sets. These armours provide various levels of physical protection and will also be utilized by the enemy.



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 nice thing is you can mix-match armour pieces to find the best balance of physical defense and magical offense for your desired character build.


[h2]Ruins Replacement Map[/h2]

Everyone's least favourite map finally got a total makeover.



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.

We have been dying to remedy this for the longest time, so when we finally were able to redesign Ruins we decided to go whole hog and completely remake the map from scratch, making it lore friendly in the process.



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.


[h2]Arena Map Revamps[/h2]

Ruins was not the only map to get some TLC. To compliment the addition of world lore, all arena maps from sandbox have gotten cosmetic touch-ups.



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!




[h2]Enemy Factions[/h2]

In the past, enemy difficulty was directly tied to armour levels, so easy enemies were the "gladiators" and hard enemies were the "soldiers" in armour.

To coincide with Crystal Hunt and the new lore, enemies are now separated out into factions, and difficulty is now faction based. That means it is possible to find enemies of any faction difficulty with mix-matched configurations of armour.



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.

For example, you are likely to find more armoured knights in the Eraden army faction whereas you will likely face a lot of powerful mages in The Eye.




[h2]New inventory system[/h2]

Before Crystal Hunt and loot there was no great need for an inventory other than a place to hold your potions and torches. However, many players did not even realize there was an inventory at all!

Admittedly, it was not very intuitive. This has been rectified in 1.0 with a very clean and intuitive inventory system that still keeps within the spirit of VR and is lore friendly.



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.


[h2]Journal[/h2]

A cool and immersive way for players to keep track of the lore they find in game is the introduction of the journal. Any lore you find will be added to the journal and sorted by faction, so tracking down all the lore has a little bit of a "gotta catch em all" vibe for lore enthusiasts and completionists.



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.


[h2]Status effects[/h2]

You might be wondering exactly what this could be since in the past you could already make enemies weightless with gravity or zap them with electricity to stun them. When we say status effects here, what we are talking about is a whole new under-the-hood system we added for how enemies become effected by status effects. The long story short is you will not see it in any gamey type of way, but it should come across intuitively.

For example, enemies exposed to fire now generate "heat" (under the hood) until a point that they actually catch fire, and eventually being on fire will char them!



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.

The creation of this new system also allows us to add status effects to the player, so you may be interested to know the player can also experience these effects if hit with them from other mages!

--

That just about wraps up all the major features! Goodbye, and good luck.




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!

[h3]More varied enemy mages[/h3]

Enemy mages have a wider variety of spellcasting at their disposal. This includes access to new spells, but also the ability to imbue weapons and arrows, and utilize some of the same combat skills player has.

This makes certain factions like The Eye particularly nasty!


[h3]New enemy voices and dying sounds[/h3]

More than 3 AAARRGHH sounds? Not in my Blade & Sorcery! ːsteammockingː

Finally addressing a long running community gag, we have added a ton of new sounds to enemies to give them more variety in voices and deaths.

The inspiration for this was based on the popularity of the mod Painful Death SFX by Sushin, who in fact works for Warpfrog!


[h3]Cross-elemental merges[/h3]

As well as each skill tree branch having their own progression, there are sections of the skill tree where unlocking two prerequisite skills on different branches may unlock a brand new cross-elemental skill.

These tend to be the biggest and baddest of skills, so are typically requiring a player to have unlocked the upper tiers of multiple skill trees, meaning they are usually late game skills.




[h3]New Tutorial[/h3]

Not just a reworked tutorial, but the tutorial now serves as an introduction to Crystal Hunt and gives context to the events around which the game takes place.

If you are playing Crystal Hunt for the first time, don't skip it!


[h3]Home persistence[/h3]

Something we had to remove some time ago has returned, with improvements! Objects you place in Home will be saved in that position when you return.

This means, although not technically an intended feature, you could put gear around your home to add visible clutter, like place a sword on a shelf. We felt this was a nice little immersion element, but if you smash up your Home furniture then that will be on you! haha


[h3]Stash system[/h3]

The book spawner in Home has some new utility in Crystal Hunt. The book spawner now serves as a kind of inventory storage for all the items, weapons and armour you purchase in Crystal Hunt, so if you buy things in the shop, they will appear here for access at any time later. You may even enjoy the element of collecting all the game weapons and armour to display in your book.

Another handy QOL function is that if you drop a weapon or item anywhere in Home, you can now quick retrieve it. You can maybe see how this would be useful in conjunction with the Home persistence. ːtankː


[h3]Sandbox enhancements[/h3]

All new weapons, armours, factions, and skills can be found in Sandbox. You can even pick and choose which skills you want to use in sandbox mid-game, as well as pick the default sandbox skill loadout when making a new character. For example, maybe you want to have the classic B&S U12 spell experience, or maybe you want no spells at all.

Following the philosophy of "we wont tell you how to have fun", we added no barriers in Sandbox, and everything is unlocked. But for this reason we recommend you play Crystal Hunt first so as not to spoil the new content. However, it is your call!


[h3]Graphics enhancements[/h3]

It is always our desire to push, push, push PCVR to the very limits!

We added some new graphical improvements to make the game even more beautiful, such as clouds casting shadows and eye adaptation to lighting changes such as going from inside a cave to outside, and vice versa.


[h3]Continued optimization[/h3]

This is a forever job for us, so nothing new there, but we continue to add optimization and improvements to dungeons, props, etc.

A pretty big boost we added was through a new custom ocean that should be a lot more performance friendly!




[h3]Cheats[/h3]

The cheat menu has a couple of new goodies to check out. We also reserved the option for the player to play Crystal Hunt with cheats if they like.

Conversely, when making a new character there is the option to disable the possibility of accessing the cheat menu mid-game in order to prevent yourself being tempted to cheat.




[h3]Mod manager QOL[/h3]

A much needed QOL feature - the ability to uninstall all mods at once.

It's funny how such a seemingly obvious thing is not obvious at the time. The necessity of this became quickly apparent when we were DM'd by some dude asking the best way to uninstall his 150 mods, lol.




[h3]Credits[/h3]

See the lovely folks behind Warpfrog!

You might also enjoy the credits video as a little chronology of the game development. Nostalgia time!


[h3]Localization[/h3]

The game supports 11 languages in total; English, French, German, Spanish (EU), Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Thai, Chinese Simplified and Chinese Traditional.


[h3]About the SDK[/h3]

An update SDK is coming! Modders will still be able to make mods as they did in U12 in the meantime, but 1.0 SDK will have some nice additions such as be the ability to make mods for Crystal Hunt itself; creating new skill tree branches for example.

If a modder has a whole modded skill tree, it should slot nicely in with ours and pro-modders could even go so far as adding description text and tutorial clips to match the vanilla skills style. ːsteamdanceː

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[h2]What's Next?[/h2]

Is this really "the end"?

Only of Early Access! Blade & Sorcery's major content development and roadmap are now complete but we will continue to support the game with bugfix patches, optimizations or QOL stuff, even when working on our next game, which will be made using our new and much improved ThunderRoad 2 framework.

In the coming weeks we are likely to be cranking on patches for 1.0 bugs that the community will inevitably unearth. The emphasis will be getting the game into the best and most stable condition it can be.

This will be the best case scenario for modders too, as without any major updates disrupting the modding scene it means your mods will no longer need updating and we will hopefully have a lovely modding renaissance period.

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You have now reached the bottom of this very long news; the year is 2034 and The Elder Scrolls VI is about to be released any year now. ːwftogrinː Thanks for reading!

On behalf of KospY and the Warpfrog team, our sincerest thank you to our players for giving us your time, your support, and sending us your good vibes over all the years of Early Access.

Now, go play some Blade & Sorcery! We are just gonna rest our eyes...



Full Changelog here!

The end of an era is approaching!

The Baron here, and I told you guys the next time you heard from me would be with a trailer and release date, so here you go! --

1.0 Full Release, "The End Update", is dropping on June 17th 2024 for PCVR. This marks the official full release of Blade & Sorcery, which has been in Early Access these past 5 years.

Check out the trailer!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

A reminder; this is your last chance to get the game at a discounted Early Access price!

When the update drops on June 17, the game price will increase from $19.99 to $29.99, marking the end of Early Access. Despite this being full release, we wanted to keep the price affordable for new players in the era of "AAAA games". ːzoya_doneː

However, if you already own the game then no worries, this will be a free update for you so any price change will be moot.

A quick note about Nomad, since Nomad players also read these news; Update 1.0 will come to Nomad, but the release date is unknown for now. Once PCVR is released and stable, the team can switch to the Nomad update porting process, which will for sure take months as it is a mountain of work. However, take solace in the knowledge that it is our goal to attempt a full port of the PCVR update to Nomad.

In the decision to release Nomad as standalone and not merge both versions into one game, we essentially doubled our work because it meant we had two separate developments to support. However this was the only way to make sure PCVR development was not limited by the Quest 2 hardware, so this is why Nomad is a completely separated "made for Quest" sister-title.

That's it for now, folks! Hope you guys enjoy the trailer, cheers!