A little over a year ago we launched Lords of the Fallen, calling upon you to take up the mantle of ‘Dark Crusader’ in our ambitious dark fantasy action-RPG.
As you’ve journeyed across Mournstead and its dual realms of Axiom and Umbral, we’ve worked closely with the Lords of the Fallen community to continue enhancing the experience, implementing a significant number of your suggestions. These include reducing mob density, adding gamepad rebinding, implementing PvE and PvP balancing, and rolling out comprehensive optimization, to name but a few.
Your feedback has been invaluable, and we’re pleased to confirm that further improvements to Lords of the Fallen will be coming very soon.
In the meantime, to mark these past twelve months in Mournstead, we wanted to look back over our shared journey to date...
October 2023 – Season of the Bleak
Firstly, a timely reminder with Halloween just days away, that the permanent otherworldly quest ‘Season of the Bleak’ was added to the game just days after launch. This pumpkin-spiced questline, which tasked players to collect six pumpkins scattered across Mournstead before confronting the Spirit of the Bleak mini-boss, was the first of several added to Lords of the Fallen as part of our post-launch content roadmap, setting the tone for what was to come.
If you’re yet to claim your orange-hued helm, but don’t know where to start, keep eyes peeled for our how-to guide on October 31st.
October 2023 – Post-launch roadmap
Not long after the game’s release, we shared our post-launch, free content roadmap that outlined our plans for the game. In addition to continuing our regular cadence of experience enhancements and quality-of-life improvements, the roadmap also featured a series of new questlines that would be released through to the end of 2023, starting with the aforementioned ‘Season of the Bleak’, and continuing from the middle of November with ‘Way of the Bucket’ (more on that below).
October & November 2023 – Difficulty Balancing
During the early weeks post-launch, we worked diligently to refine the balance between challenge and enjoyability in Lords of the Fallen, based on the feedback you sent. As a result, before the end of November 2023, we’d released more than 25 updates with an excess of 100 enhancements that improved your experience of the game.
These included a reduction in enemy density throughout Mournstead, with the number of mobs decreasing by up to 30% in some of the most challenging areas; a rebalancing of ranged enemy accuracy so players weren’t sniped by Adyr’s forces before they were even spotted; and improving enemy leashing so they wouldn’t pursue you overenthusiastically from one area to another.
November 2023 – Way of the Bucket
The Way of the Bucket questline featured a new armour set formed from some of the many broken pails found across Mournstead, and paid tribute to the self-styled Bucketlord… one of the more unusual characters found in Pilgrim’s Perch. After defeating the sinners (those who had drifted from the Bucketlords’ gospel) and collecting the ‘Pride of the Bucketlords’ items they drop, players could exchange them for armour crafted from the wooden scuttles.
The quest launched alongside a new selection of spells, broadening the arcane options available for Dark Crusaders to exploit.
December 2023 – Season of Revelry
As the blood wine spilled over in December, we released the two-part ‘Season of Revelry’. While the first update – ‘Offerings of Orius’ – added six new spells (including the devastating Immolation), additional secret boss weapon abilities, and three new projectiles (Blood Vomit, Explosive Mines, and Frost Worms) the second part – ‘Trial of the Three Spirits’ – unleashed three questlines that on completion would provide new, separate armours as tributes to the gods of Umbral, Rhogar, and Orius.
This concluding part of the Season of Revelry also saw the introduction of new grievous strikes, embellishing each family of weapons with two unique finishes: one for single-handed wielding and another for two-handed wielding. It also saw two extremely popular community requests rolled out: gamepad rebinding, and a Coffer storage box added to Skyrest Bridge, which allowed players to free up inventory space and deposit up to 2,000 items in it.
Oh, and we added a fourth, festive throwable… SNOWBALLS!
April 2024 – Master of Fate
One of our biggest post-launch content drops launched as part of our ‘Master of Fate – v1.5’ update in April this year: the Advanced Game Modifier System. Highly anticipated by the community since the release of the post-launch roadmap timeline, the system introduced the ability to fully customise each playthrough of Lords of the Fallen through six different modifiers and randomisers.
Some, like the pre-upgraded loot option – which meant weapons and shields looted from enemies come pre-upgraded according to player level – supported new players while others, including the ability to reduce the number of Vestiges, increase the mob density, or activate permadeath, challenged even Mournstead’s mightiest!
It's been fascinating to see the community experiment with the combinations of modifiers and randomisers on offer; one particular favourite of ours – activating pre-upgraded loot, randomising loot and enemies, and turning on permadeath, effectively transforms Lords of the Fallen into an all-new roguelite experience… give it a go, if you dare!
With the release of Master of Fate, we’d concluded the epic post-launch content roadmap, delivered more than 30 updates, vastly improved stability and performance, and added an arsenal of new weapons sets, armours, projectiles, and spells that together elevated Lords of the Fallen from v1.0 in October, to v1.5 less than seven months later.
But there was more to come…
May 2024 – Clash of Champions
Boss battles offer some of the most memorable moments in Lords of the Fallen, whether that’s against the grotesque and putrid Congregator of Flesh, the dragon-riding Lightreaper, or even the initial confrontation with Pieta, She of Blessed Renewal. In May, we surprise-launched the ‘Clash of Champions’ update, accessible through Mournstead’s many Vestiges, that would put these bosses front and centre once again.
Featuring two new modes – ‘Echoes of Battle’ and ‘Crucible’ – Clash of Champions unlocked a way for Dark Crusaders to experience their favourite boss encounters again and again, or challenge themselves in deadly boss rush encounters across six increasingly challenging trials.
Unlocked by defeating the bosses listed in each of the separated crucibles in the main game, these trials go from facing three or four bosses, through to the ultimate challenge… The ‘Crucible of the Lords’, which features an incredible 12 bosses in consecutive combat.
Both modes are playable either solo or with a fellow Lampbearer in online co-op multiplayer, with additional rewards – including exclusive armour tincts – unlockable for those skilled enough to run the gauntlet of Crucible’s trials.
We hope you’ve enjoyed the past twelve months in Mournstead, and again, thank you for your feedback during the year. We’ll share more news on those upcoming, new enhancements very soon, but in the meantime, post your favourite moments in the comments below – or even leave a Steam review and let us know.
In light, we walk.
The HEXWORKS Team
