Greetings Vessels,
We’re excited to introduce some of the changes in this update, as they have been hot topics around the community.
One of the most prominent pieces of feedback we’ve had from day 1 is that many of you feel the downtime between fighting a camp and returning to Raven form to continue traversing the map is too long. To help reduce this downtime, we’ve added more Raven Towers around the map, particularly in areas where the existing towers were difficult to access (on top of a mountain, for example).
We’ve opted for this approach because it addresses the downtime concerns, while still giving us a very important period of ground traversal between camps. Through playing in the past, we've found that traversing part of the world on the ground is essential to provide a sense of scale to the world. This sense of scale is lost if the player has the option to transform back to Raven Form at any time, and it’s a key element to maintaining the open-world feel of Ravenbound.
These periods of ground traversal also give us the opportunity to introduce some fun exploration elements in parts of the map that may be overlooked when flying, and we want to keep options for these types of side adventures open as we continue to expand on the game.
We also want to give more clarity and direction for those who may just be starting their first run, so we’re introducing more quest objectives to guide players and show how the core game loop works. For example,there are now new objectives guiding players to collect mana and cleansed treasure chests. We hope that this will help new players become more familiar with the flow of Ravenbound. To improve even more on this clarity, we’re also adding more tooltips for mana, coin, and health to mention a few.
A series of adjustments are being introduced to the Hatred system. We teased this in our Dev Q&A on Discord last Thursday, but now we can tell you all about our improvements to Hatred. From now on, players will no longer absorb a temporary Hatred fragment when opening a chest with Hatred. Instead, one of the three available cards that pop up will be a Hatred card, and to add variety to this aspect, we’re introducing new Hatred cards – in general, these cards are less punishing. Furthermore, once a Warden has been defeated and players have received an Ellri blessing, all locked fragment slots will become unlocked instead of only one. In the same vein, we’ve changed the way bosses and elites become empowered by Hatred – you’ll find the full details below.
This is only an initial step we’ve taken to strike a balance between the tough choices you’ll make during a lifetime. It should also ensure exploration doesn’t feel punishing, but rather, adds an extra element of strategy and choice to your runs.
Last but not least, this update includes a variety of quality of life improvements and bug fixes so please read on for the full scope!
Raven Towers
We’ve added 111 smaller Raven Towers with the aim of reducing the amount of downtime between enemy camps and exploration.
The new smaller Towers
Hatred System Adjustments
“Your feedback on the Hatred system has been heard, and we're working to strike a balance between tension and open-world freedom. To make the system less punishing, more intuitive, and enjoyable, this patch introduces some changes. Let's work together to optimize the Hatred system.”
Hatred is being changed in a number of ways. Firstly, we’ve adjusted the way Bosses and Elites are empowered by Hatred.
Each enemy type will now have their own unique balance for how much health and damage increase they receive from a new base value we call the Hatred Level.
When a hatred card appears, your hatred level is raised.
Previously, enemies received a 5% boost per Hatred card, but now we’ve now changed this value to Level 1 which is a base overall value for how many times Elites and Bosses have been empowered.
Additionally, once a Warden has been defeated and the Ellri’s blessing has been received, all locked fragment slots will now be cleared and reset from Hatred.
Player Graves have also been changed slightly – they no longer carry Hatred, and there will now only be one Grave per selected region, or in other words, one grave per Warden.
Finally, rather than absorbing a Hatred fragment whenever you open a chest with Hatred, now you’ll find that one of the three cards that appear will be a Hatred card – which leads us to the introduction of the new Hatred cards. With these we aim to make Hatred less punishing, while introducing more variety to the mechanic.
| Hatred Card | Effect | [/tr]
| Mana Leech | On Reveal: You lose 1 Mana | [/tr]
| Vanishing Wealth | On Reveal: You lose 50 Coin | [/tr]
| Chains of Enfeeblement | On Reveal: Lock a Relic Slot | [/tr]
| Blunted Edge | On Reveal: Decrease the original Weapon Damage of your currently equipped weapon by 10% | [/tr]
| Mana Exhaust | On Reveal: Increase the Mana Cost of all Cards in your Hand by 1 | [/tr]
| Chaotic Mana Exhaust | On Reveal: Increase the Mana Cost of a random card in your hand by 3 | [/tr]
| Armor Erosion | On Reveal: Decrease the Armor of your currently equipped armor by 3 | [/tr]
| Fragment Shatter | On Reveal: Your Fragments are destroyed | [/tr]
| Avaricious Trade | On Reveal: Vendor Prices are increased by 20% | [/tr]
Icons for the new Hatred cards
Additional Objectives and Markers
We want to give players, especially first time players, a smoother experience when first starting their journey in Ávalt. There will now be additional objectives and markers in between the Tear of Hatred and the Warden in order to get you more familiar with the gameplay loop.
Additional objectives included collecting mana from the shattered pillar in the Tear of Hatred, and a prompt to open chests that were cleansed after the Tear was cleansed – these chests will be identifiable by a quest marker, and there will also be a quest tracker to empower a number of fragments.
Quality of Life Updates
Tooltips
Tooltips have been added with information about mana, coin, and health. An additional tooltip warning for Hatred will pop up once hatred has been increased 4 times, informing players that bosses are becoming stronger and that chests with Hatred should be avoided.
Hand screen Selection
The hand screen will now retain the last selected card once it’s reopened. It will also automatically select the card to the right after playing a card, if applicable.
Loot History Rework
The way our loot history system worked sometimes resulted in a high frequency of common cards showing up during draws. We’ve reworked the system to ensure that duplicate cards no longer appear in the same reward screen, while prioritizing older cards in the history when generating new loot. With this change, players should notice a more balanced distribution of cards.
Frozen Status
The status will no longer break attack chains, and when an enemy stops being Frozen they will continue their attack chains.
Bug Fixes
Some of the more notable bugs being patched in this update are issues leading to deleted save files, Vessels with two weapon traits, and a leftover red square issue. Your bug reports via Discord are incredibly helpful, so we’re highlighting reports we’ve received via the community, as well as other issues we were already aware of. Please keep your reports coming as we work towards improving stability and keep on squashing bugs!
Crashes
- esolved an issue where a crash would lead to saves being deleted*
Challenges & Legacy
- Resolved an issue where challenges for completing siphons sometimes would not progress*
- Resolved an issue where the Lore tablet on the island after new spawn didn’t unlock in the Lore tab and also didn’t grant Legacy when read*
- Fixed an issue where Legacy points for visiting multiple Ellri statues were not being granted immediately after finishing a lifetime
Cards
- Fixed the issue where some Gale cards are shown with the incorrect element in the cards collection*
- Fixed the issue where scrolling through the cards compendium via mouse wheel only worked while the cursor is hovering over a card*
- Fixed an issue caused by where cards that interact with the Spored debuff couldn’t trigger consistently due to the duration of Spored being too short
- Fixed an issue where Gold Shackled Bottle consumed more coins than it was intended
- Resolved an issue where closing the hand screen during the "Play card" animation created a broken card when opening the hand screen again
Misc
- Fixed a bug where sometimes Vessels would get two weapon traits
- Fixed an issues where red squares would appear when players first enter the Siphon select area
- Fixed an issue where the all equipment in the Blacksmith shop cost 0
- Fixed an issue where starting over during the rift cleansing cutscene caused the player's character to stop responding to any input
- Resolved a problem where the game could be soft locked by button mashing
- Fixed issues in multiple camps where the enemies had trouble navigating
- Fixed Tomb selection gates so they don't trigger SFX when approaching from outside
*This indicates bugs that were directly reported by the community
Thank you all for the submitting bug reports, leaving comments on Steam forums and interacting in our Discord server! We can't wait to read your feedback as we continue to work on Ravenbound.
Make sure to join our Discord community where you can discuss strategy with other Vessels, report issues directly to the QA team and get notifications for our next dev Q&A.
See you in Ávalt.
