Changelog for Update #4 v.0.7.4.0

Highlights

New playable area: Albaneve Summits

• Embervale has just gotten much bigger. We are introducing the "Albaneve Summits", a vast and treacherous mountain biome expanding the north of Embervale. Accessible through the Nomad Highlands and Kindlewastes, this new region demands your strongest and most skilled Flameborn!
• The Albaneve Summits are teeming with exciting locations, icy lakes, frozen rivers, deep snow, and unique alpine flora and fauna. Glide through new aerial updrafts for added height and extended flights.
• Face formidable new foes with fresh tactics and beware of a powerful creature rumored to haunt the highest peaks.
• Discover friendly wildlife eking out a living on the edge of the world.
• New Shroud roots can be felled to gain additional skill points and rid the world of evil.
• Uncover Embervale’s tragic past through a series of new quests, and unlock exclusive achievements.

New level cap and crafting tier

• The maximum level has now been increased to 35.
• Discover and collect rare resources exclusive to the Albaneve Summits.
• Unlock and construct new crafting stations needed for higher-tier items.
• Every class and subclass can craft unique armor sets, while new spells, skills, and perks expand your capabilities.

Dynamic Weather

• The first iteration of our weather system is finally there. Experience a living world as weather changes dynamically across Embervale, so prepare to get wet or find some shelter.
• High-altitude areas are prone to snowfall and freezing temperatures, which can drain your body heat. Use specialized armor, special foods, and consumables crafted from recipes available through NPCs to survive the cold. Simple tools like campfires and torches provide additional warmth when navigating the coldest areas.

New Townsfolk

• The Flame's power has brought more souls back to life, ready to join your settlement!
• Discover Townsfolk across Embervale, unlock their quests, and bring them home.
• Place new assistants in secondary bases, giving you full crafting functionality away from the main settlement.
• Townsfolk now wander, sleep in beds at night, and engage with the Flameborn.
• Fresh cosmetic outfits inspired by Townsfolk clothing are now available for the Flameborn.

Farm Animals and Pets

• Your base is about to get much livelier with farm animals and pets!
• Non-hostile animals can now be tamed and brought home to produce valuable resources, provided you give them some food and shelter.
• With shelter and enough food, in time your animal flock may grow.
• Find and tame new pets across Embervale to join you, and yes—you can pet them!

Visual Update and Scene Rendering

• With update 4 we are introducing major improvements to scene rendering. Our aim for this update was to work on the quality and feel of the rendering of the scenery and work on better and faster reactions to bright and dark scenes.
• A new tone mapper was introduced, which allows a better overall image with more consistency in the colors and an improved overall impression of the final image of the scenery.
• Work on the sky rendering allows the display of a more realistic and convincing atmosphere and more realistically illuminated clouds. This also includes more realistic and dramatic color changes in the sky during the day- and night cycles.
• The addition of local tone mapping and adjustments to exposure compensation produces a better balance between bright and dark areas of the scene. At the same time, the dynamic global illumination now also reacts faster and more correctly to changing light conditions.
• A reworked bloom rendering helps reduce overly dramatic effects while allowing for a more pleasant overall image.

Noticeable Gameplay Changes

• The grappling hook can now be used to pull airborne enemies into melee range or close the distance to large foes. Check the skill tree to unlock these new abilities.
• Experience more challenging gliding mechanics with air turbulence affecting flight paths. Use the gameplay settings to switch turbulence off if you prefer to sip some tea while gliding across Embervale.
• The game can now be paused in single-player mode.
• Text size can now be adjusted in the UI.

Changelog

Gameplay

• Pressing [ESC] now pauses the gameplay when playing in single-player mode. Pausing the game is not possible in multiplayer.
• The level cap for players is now raised to 35. The enemies in the new region start at level 28.
• A new aerial phenomenon at certain locations in the mountains pushes players upwards while gliding. These upstreams allow reaching higher areas easily.
• In the cold mountains, icy surfaces and deep snow pose new challenges for exploration and traversal.
• Areas at high altitudes now have extreme coldness. Extreme coldness is lethal when players are exposed to it for too long without counter-measures. There are various different steps that players can undertake to prolong the time they can endure in extreme coldness before hypothermia sets in. Follow the quests to discover new crafting materials for warmer clothes, new types of food and other methods for keeping warm. Just bringing a torch also already helps a little bit.
• The amount of body heat a player naturally has can be adjusted in the difficulty setting of the game world.
• A new tier of weapons can be found in the world for each type of weapon and at several rarity levels.
• Epic versions of the musical instruments can now be found in the world, with increased effect.
• Several new consumables and throwables are available to make exploration easier or help in combat.
• The skill tree now has 2 new skills that allow, when unlocked, to use the grappling hook during combat. Get over here!
• New gameplay elements have been added to combat such as certain enemy projectiles that can be parried and redirected back towards the enemy.
• The Merciless Attack has a new animation when wielding daggers.
• The damage for the Merciless Attack is now higher when using daggers.
• Gliding is now affected by aerial turbulence. On occasion, players need to re-adjust their flight paths to reach their target. The aerial turbulence can be switched off in the difficulty settings in the game world.
• The cost for resetting the skill tree is now calculated based on the number of previously spent skill points. Each spent skill point costs 1 rune. Please note: the number of available skill points after the reset is determined by the progress of the character, which means the character level plus the number of destroyed shroud roots. When resetting the skill tree with old character saves for the first time there can be a difference between previously spent skill points and what is available after the reset. This is the result of previous tweaks to the costs of individual skills.
• The xp needed for leveling up has been reworked. While it felt that at the beginning of the journey, the game provided a good amount of XP for regular level ups, starting around the Revelwoods the various XP sources began to stack just a little bit too much so that many players reached max level a bit too early with large areas of the Kindlewastes still to be discovered. The new level up curve should spread out the level up just a little bit more in the later parts of the current journey. We’ll monitor the feedback and our own impressions after the update and we will adjust further if needed.
• Fixed an issue that caused arrows to appear sideways for a very short duration when firing a bow.
• Fixed several ranged combat issues where mana costs could be applied incorrectly or charge duration for spells and arrows could be too short, e.g. Eternal Frost Arrows could even be shot without mana, by spamming the attack and using a staff while a wand was selected in the action bar, incorrectly skipping spell charging times and mana costs. Sorry speedrunners, you'll have to find something else.
• Improved the prioritization of grappling hook targeting. When an anchor is directly targeted, it will be prioritized higher.
• When dying while being poisoned, the poison is now correctly removed after respawning.
• The item Cleaned Bandage no longer removes poison. Instead, there is now a dedicated antidote item that can be unlocked by collecting poison sacs. Later on in the progression, there is also an improved version of the antidote item.

Game World and Enemies

• A new biome “Albaneve Summits” can now be reached from the northern border of Nomad Highlands and Kindlewastes, offering around 100 new points of interest.
• The quest guiding Flameborn into the new region is unlocked when the flame is at level 6 and the Ghost Glider has been obtained.
• A new Elixir well and 6 new locations with Shroud roots raise the maximum of obtainable skill points.
• More than 20 new and updated enemy types have been added to the world.
• A new boss encounter has been added. A quest guides players through the steps to summon the new creature. Bring your best gear. And maybe friends.
• A new set of trees and plants grants new resources and can be used for the player base.
• Weather changes now dynamically over time. While it can rain in areas such as the Springlands and the Revelwoods, at higher altitudes rain turns to snow.
• Wetness slightly debuffs players and affects the surroundings by for example extinguishing small fires. Also, during rain it is easier to sneak into enemy camps because enemy perception is reduced.
• The frequency of unpleasant weather phenomena can be adjusted in the difficulty settings of the game world.
• The models for the sage and indigo plants have been adjusted to make it easier to tell them apart.
• Numerous small areas of the world have been tweaked and fixed, such as grapple hook anchors, ladders that couldn’t be climbed properly or floating objects.
• Fixed several locations where players could fall through terrain.
• 4 new songs can be discovered for those campfire jam sessions.
• Previously found snow patches on the mountains surrounding Springlands and Revelwoods have been moved to higher altitudes. Climate change is caused by people, but in this case in particular, it’s level designers who are responsible.
• Fixed numerous instances where the dynamic audio ambiance detection would detect the environment incorrectly and then play the wrong background sounds. For example, when inside huge trees the system would start playing cave sounds, which is incorrect. Trees are not caves.
• Fixed a mislocated aiming dot on bunnies.
• Added a new material to mountains at large distances to reduce pattern tiling.
• Polished and improved numerous textures on older props and items.
• Fixed an unintentional clearing of the fog of war at certain locations on the surface while exploring the various Hollow Halls.
• Fixed the reward for the quest "Underground Infestation".
• Fixed incorrect collision on some older props.
• Improved the visuals at locations where terrain voxels and building voxels intersect.
• Added new background music tracks for the new regions.

Villagers, farm animals and pets

• All 7 crafting NPCs now have a day- and night cycle in which they explore the base, inspect interesting locations, take breaks, talk to nearby players, and go to sleep at night. Either on the floor if the player decided to not provide a bed for them (a disturbing number of you) or in a lovely, dedicated bed just as they deserve.
• Crafting assistants have been added to the game. When found and unlocked in the game world they can be placed in secondary player bases, offering the same crafting options as the crafting NPCs.
• Townsfolk villagers have been added to the game. Similar to the crafting NPCs, villagers roam the base, offer dialog options and new quests and follow a simple day-and-night cycle.
• Freed villagers will offer more knowledge about the world and give the Flameborn numerous more quests. As a reward for your help, villagers will help you find more villager souls, help find lost pets to bring home, uncover vanity items for that extravagant look while exploring, and collectible items to decorate the halls of the Flameborn’s home.
• The summoning scepter menu has been reworked to allow the placement of crafting NPCs, assistant crafting NPCs and villagers.
• The summoning scepter now offers the option to set the roaming range for placed NPCs.
• The summoning scepter can now be used to assign the selected NPC to a highlighted bed.
• The sheltered state for NPCs has been reworked. Previously it checked the fixed location of roofs and walls over NPCs. Now the location of the assigned bed checks for a roof and walls.
• Added new animations and voice lines for all NPCs.
• 6 different peaceful wildlife animals can now be tamed, picked up and placed into the player base.
• For every type of farm animal there is now craftable food and bait. For more information, talk to Emily Fray, the farmer.
• For every type of farm animal there are now sleeping and feeding props that can be crafted by Emily Fray.
• Farm animal feeding props are inventories that only accept the designated food items for the animal type that the prop is for. When the animal is hungry and can reach the filled prop, it will automatically take food from the stack.
• Farm animals produce different types of resources at regular intervals as long as they find food and shelter when they need it.
• When there are two animals of the same kind within reach of each other there is a chance that they have offspring. Both parent animals need to have access to food and a sheltered bed, and a free bed must exist for the offspring.
• Only one offspring can be born per night in each player base, even if several parent animals fulfill the preconditions.
• Animals can be petted. It makes your character feel warm and fuzzy inside.
• 8 new pets have been added to the game, consisting of 5 dogs and 3 cats. Quests lead the player to the locations where the pets can be found and tamed in Embervale. Once tamed, they can be picked up and placed into a player base where they will roam around and let themselves be petted.
• The taming difficulty can be set in the difficulty settings of the game world.
• Should villagers, animals or pets have trouble navigating a base, it can help to place them again at a different position. If it would be best for some villagers to not leave their designated space, the roaming distance can be set to 0m for each NPC individually.

Crafting, Building and Terraforming

• There is a new crafting tier with completely new resources for mining, harvesting and looting.
• Several new crafting stations increase the selection of available recipes further.
• 9 new sets of armor are available for crafting.
• 6 new building block materials and 5 new terrain materials are available for building and terraforming.
• Numerous new furniture and decorative props can be crafted with new materials from the new biome.
• Numerous props that previously couldn't be crafted by players are now available at their respective crafting stations. Among others, there are now several new crates, boxes and sacks, carts and farming tools, archery props and combat dummies.
• King-size beds now have several slots for sleeping. Well, just 2 slots, sorry.
• Building with materials from the Shroud no longer triggers eerie ambient sounds in the player base.
• Fireworks have been added to the list of craftable recipes. There goes the neighborhood.
• The fossil collection shelves no longer need the ectoplasm block as a crafting resource. The resource has been replaced with cloth.
• The recipe for the secret Vukah temple door now uses the correct stone block type as a resource.
• Big coffin lids now have the correct size.
• Fixed multiple props that had incorrect comfort settings or comfort descriptions.
• Fixed an incorrect reference to the laboratory in some recipes for the Alchemist.
• Fixed an issue with the “Sage” armor set that caused the boots recipe to not show up.
• Fixed incorrectly classified one-handed weapons that would incorrectly appear as two-handed weapons in weapon stands, such as the Wolf’s Hydra.
• Fixed the position of shields on weapon stands.
• Fixed several minor issues with hair, hats and helmets.
• Fixed missing stats on the Archer Trousers.
• Some braziers have been moved from the illumination comfort category to the hearth category.

Technical Improvements

• The VFX shader compiling has been moved to the start of the game for the Steam Deck. This means that the first start after an update will take longer. The move was necessary to avoid stuttering and lower performance during gameplay.
• Updated the rendering of the atmosphere. This includes better light scattering in distance fog and better transitions on the horizon thanks to improved gradients for more realistic and visually pleasing colors.
• Improved the rendering of clouds with more realistic reactions to sunlight and shadows.
• Reworked the rendering of the day- and night cycle with improved and more dramatic color transitions, especially during sunrise and sunset.
Introduced a new tone mapper in the post-processing. This allows better control over the color palette of the final image of the game.
• Bloom has been reworked to reduce overly dramatic bright areas around strong light sources while keeping the positive effect on the overall image quality.
• Updated to a new method of local tone mapping and local exposure to assist with a more consistent and readable display of brightness when dark and illuminated areas are very close to each other.
• Dynamic global illumination probes react faster and more reliably to light updates.
• Reduced light leaks through solid roofs and other places where it shouldn’t leak.
• Players now leave traces in the snow.
• Fixed visible seams in shadow areas at further distances.
• Fixed issues with the display of terrain when multiple materials are blended on top of each other.
• Improved the lighting in the title menu scene.
• Added a new voxel compression method. This leads to a smaller installation file and less used space on the disc.
• Fixed crashes that could occur on Intel Arc graphics cards.
• The visual quality of reflective materials has been improved, such as metallic parts of armor pieces.
• Improved the visual presentation of the Shroud areas surrounding the playable map.
• Fixed an issue that could lead to the black screen fading out too early when starting into the game and thereby showing the gameworld as it’s still finalizing loading.

UI, Inventory and Text

• It is now possible to open the [ESC]-menu when the character has fallen or while fast-traveling.
• Updated visuals journal menu tiles with some nice new images.
• Improved the map markers by focusing on quest markers and waypoints over optional markers when zooming out.
• Tweaked the color palette of markers.
• Created a clickable overlay on the world map for waypoints that are outside the current view area.
• Fixed several incorrectly displayed values in skill descriptions and items when the difficulty setting was set to higher or lower than the default difficulty.
• Added new tutorials to the tutorials section in the journal.
• Improved navigation through the crafting recipe categories.
• Fixed some instances where the “Go to Journal” link in map markers led to a wrong journal entry.
• Runes are now taken from magical chests as well when used for the skill reset.
• Fixed an issue that prevented picking up loot when all slots in the backpack were full but the picked-up loot would still fit on a non-filled stack of the same items.
• Fixed several minor issues with quick transferring items between the backpack, the action bar and chests.
• When hosting a multiplayer session, the UI now enforces setting a password for the friends role. Hosts can still override this should they choose to.
• Fixed an issue with lockpicks and keys where the UI would show them as missing at locked doors when in fact the player owned 1 single lockpick or key.
• Changed the way the UI depicts durations of buffs, states and other effects to make it easier to read.
• Fixed instances where collecting loot didn’t correctly combine the loot pick-up notifications.
• Fixed that the UI didn’t show the draining of torches when the difficulty setting was set to easy.
• Fixed typos and incorrect translations. A big thanks to the awesome community for identifying and reporting localization issues!