Welcome to the Wayfinder Echoes Update!
What is The Echoes Update?
When online games such as Wayfinder reach the end of their service, they tend to disappear forever. This is the unfortunate reality when games lose funding, can't cover the costs of servers or staff, and face countless other challenges.
Having all played titles that have gone through this cycle, we wanted to take a different approach. We cherish the world our team has created and the characters we've introduced to our players, and we don't want them to be lost in the Gloom. Our goal is to leave players with a product they can enjoy indefinitely.
This shift enables the game to exist perpetually. Players can download it to play solo or enjoy co-op gameplay with up to two friends.
Before leaving Early Access and releasing to 1.0, we'll introduce Matchmaking, a new Wayfinder, a new zone, housing expansion and many more features. The future beyond that is up to you, the player. We love Wayfinder, we love the world, and we love the IP and we'll continue to grow it if we're able to with your support!
Wayfinder Echoes introduces significant changes from the previous version of Wayfinder, No previous data is carried over to this new game. Below, we've outline outlined the biggest changes.
Echoes (v0.5) Patch Overview
Monetization & Founder’s Packs
- All Founder’s Items (excluding currencies) are now available to Founders[list]
- These items will be granted to you upon completing your first entry into the Gloom.
- 500 Runesilver - 2400 Runesilver = 1 coin
- 2500 - 4400 = 2 coins
- 4500 - 6400 = 3 coins
- 6500 - 8400 = 4 coins
- 8500 - 10,400 = 5 coins
- 10,500 - 12,400 = 6 coins
- 12,500+ = 7 coins
Wayfinders
- Find and summon Kyros out of the Gloom.
- Unlock the secrets of the Deceivers to summon Senja from her mysterious confinement.
- Eradicate the Night’s Maw infestation to unleash the power of Venomess.
- Challenge the Bloodspawn to liberate Grendel from its grasp.
- Caps at 30 Ranks.
- An account wide XP bar that all Wayfinders can contribute to.
- Each Rank grants a Talent Point to be spent in the Talent tree.
- Certain Ranks will also give bonuses such as increased base stats, affinity points, echo capacity & slots, and archetype specific weapon masteries & defensive powers. [list]
- Weapon Mastery system has been removed and consolidated into the Wayfinder Rank system.
Grendel
Grendel is an engine of destruction fueled by fury. Before the Fall he was an infamous warrior of the Maze, a brutal veteran of a hundred battles. He's more vicious than anything spawned by the Gloom, but he's on our side... for now.- (Passive) Blood Rage: Grendel enters into a Blood Rage when an enemy's guard is broken. While raging, Grendel gains increased damage and movement speed, and he takes less Break damage from incoming attacks.
- Tremor: Stomp the floor, sending out a shockwave in a line, dealing high Break damage.
- Whirlwind: Rapidly spin and strike all enemies around while moving for a short time.
- Mighty Leap: Leap forward a short distance, damaging enemies around the landing point.
- (Ultimate) Berserker Frenzy: Grendel explodes with rage, dealing heavy Break damage to enemies in a large area and causing Grendel to enter a Berserker Frenzy for 15 seconds. While frenzied, Grendel gains increased Weapon Power, Ability Power, Break Power, Movement Speed, and immunity to Break damage. When this state ends, Grendel explodes, dealing damage to enemies in a large area.
Loot & Progression
- All cosmetic items and power items that we previously had are in-game drops with stats attached ala a traditional ARPG.
- Increased drop rates of all items and loot across the board.
- Added hundreds of secrets to find in each location, all with rewards for exploration.
- Affinity Cap increased to 25. [list]
- 3rd Affinity Perk unlocked at 25.
- Echoes are now uniquely equipped[list]
- You can only equip 1 echo from a certain creature.
- For example: Attack echoes can only be slotted into Attack slots.
- Cross and Rush type echo costs have been reduced further.
- All rarities can reach rank 5.
- Moved some echo slots from weapon to Wayfinder progression.
- Since weapons will be swapped out much more often, we wanted to reduce the time managing sockets when trying out a new weapon
- Simpler recipes and reduced total number of consumables.
- 30min durations that persist when traveling.
- 1 offensive, 1 defensive effect allowed at a time.
- 3% XP bonus added to each consumable effect.
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NEW! Weapons
Weapons have undergone major changes from what they were before the Echoes update. Weapons have been converted to loot drops with fixed levels and stats. They can be found as drops, bought from vendors or as quest rewards.
- Weapons no longer level up, but drop at different level ranges.[list]
- Weapon XP Resonance Caches have been removed.
- Rush and Cross type echo slots are fixed.
- Weapon Essences have been removed.
Oh, also…
- 10 New Weapons!
NEW! Armor System
- All styles & personas that were previously only available for purchase in the store have been converted to armor sets with stat bonuses.
- Armor can drop, be bought from vendors or received as quest rewards.
- Armors is collection based, so you only have to find each armor piece once. [list]
- Each Wayfinder will launch with 9 armor sets, and each set is made up of 5 individual pieces that can be mixed and matched.
- You can unlock these via progression on that Wayfinder.
- Personas are purely cosmetic and complete skins.
Expanded Main Story Quest
Wayfinder’s story has been refreshed to better accommodate players who’d prefer to jump straight into the action or dive deeper into the lore at their leisure. Significant updates to existing content have interwoven our Call of the Void and Loose Threads live events into the main story of the game, and new quest content has been added to the new Frostmarch overland area, leading to a grand finale in the Wayfinder’s fight against the Gloom.- New Hunts, Lost Zones and Quests added throughout the story line.
NEW! Frostmarch
The zone players Deepwood Holt has been massively expanded… we’re talking 3x the size of Highlands! What was Deepwood Holt is now a hub in the newly added overland Frostmarch! Players will find all the things that were previously in Deepwood Holt such as Graymourn, The Shrouded Woods, The Bone Orchard, The Hollow Heart, and Bal Duum Lost Zones.- The quests that were previously in Deepwood Holt have been overhauled to utilize the new zone.
- 3 New World Bosses
- 20+ quests and activities
- 20+ New Events
- Marks Event Reward Currency [list]
- Earn Marks by completing events in Frostmarch. Marks can be used to purchase Armor, Weapons, Cosmetics and Mounts from Warden Rust in Deepwood Holt.
- Patrol quests are repeatable content that you can find throughout the zone.
- Completion of these rewards Marks
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Housing, Jobs, Mutators
Housing
- All housing items have been converted to loot drops throughout the game.
- Now when you find a housing item, you also receive the recipe to create more.
- 20+ New housing items!
- Increased Housing item limit!
- Housing item limit raised from 125 to 550.
- 500 for decorations
- 50 for lighting items
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Jobs:
- Jobs now reward Helper Coins.[list]
- Helper Queue has been removed.
Mutators:
- The 3rd slot will now provide unique boons to players based on which imbuement was slotted.
- Shadow’s Embrace: You periodically erupt with shadow energy, launching tentacles that leech health from enemies.
- Gloom Collapse will remain as the only 3 slot mutator, which by default will always give the Shadow’s Embrace boon above.
Post Game
We’ve rebalanced the content up to and including Aturach the Deathless, and also added an Endgame system for those who want to be challenged!- NEW! Mythic Hunts & Bounty Board![list]
- Once you have completed the Story, the Huntmaster in Skylight will offer you additional challenges…
- The Huntmaster will offer Mythic Hunt Bounties to defeat certain hunts with a specific Imbuement. [list]
- Completing bounties will reward Glory. Glory can be used to purchase the most powerful version of any weapon in the game and also something a bit more Heroic…
Other Notes
- 10,000+ Bug fixes, updates, tweaks, and balance adjustments across the game.
- NEW! Difficulties [list]
- The difficulty setting can be changed at any time out of combat
- Difficulty levels are Story, Normal, Challenging, Heroic.
- You can invite your friends directly through the Steam Friends list, or when in-game, select Invite to Party
- The player’s Gloom Dagger will remain behind and can be interacted with to revive the player (with a longer timer than the gloomgrasp state).
Known Issues
Thank you to all of our Founders who took part in our Preview Event of Echoes. Below are the Day 1 patch notes.
Day 1 Patch
Performance
- Significantly increased texture streaming pool size.
- Loading Art is now supported on all aspect ratios.
- Improved Ultra-Wide Monitor Support: Added a Y-axis constraint to resolve Field of View (FOV) issues on ultra-wide monitors.
- Fixed an issue causing hitches when tracking quests.
CO-OP
- Fixed players getting stuck in a loading screen if the host launched a new activity in the middle of an active event.
- Fixed some cases of players crashing when joining others through steam.
- The Forge event should now function correctly in co-op instances.
- You can no longer access the character menu while in spectator mode.
- Fixed some cases of long loading times when traveling between activities.
Steam Deck
- Resetting to default graphic settings should now actually do that.
Grendel
- Fixed an issue where Grendel could not Leap without movement input.
- Fixed an issue causing Tremor to appear mid-air.
- Fixed an issue where Grendel would not receive an Affinity point at level 28.
Combat & Progression
- Players now earn 3x more XP towards Reward Towers.
- Fixed an issue where Weapon Mastery Ranks were stacking. This is technically a nerf, but we needed to fix this. If it ends up just feeling worse we can make some improvements to the masteries.
- Kyros Savage Rake should now correctly deal damage in co-op instances.
- Fixed a crash caused by the Requiem rifle ability “Eye of Judgement.”
- Added attack queueing to Dual Wield attacks after dashing, should now smoothly transition into attack combos after dashing.
- Enemies should now correctly end ambient animations when attacked.
- All equipped Echoes should now remain equipped when swapping between Wayfinders.
- Adjusted Wayfinder Rank XP curve to unlock talents sooner.
- Lowered the damage output on certain Guardian type enemies.
- Fixed an issue where Talents wouldn’t clear when trying to respec.
- Fixed an issue that allowed players to spend more than one Talent point on a single node.
- Fixed an issue where equipped Echoes would rearrange into the wrong slots when unlocking Heroic Niss.
- Added an icon to indicate which Wayfinder individual Echoes are equipped on.
- Increased rewards from Enlightening Treasure and Prison Break events.
- Reduced the cost of Witchcharmed Effigies for goods from Avarys in Reaver Woods.
- Mythic Dread Legion Echo now functions correctly.
- Mythic Broodmother S’ilreth Echo now functions correctly.
- Mythic Azaar, Storm of Blades Echo now functions correctly.
- Night’s Maw now drops the correct Rush Echo.
- Venomess' Summoning Stone should no longer drop if you already have unlocked Venomess.
- Kyros Summoning Stone should no longer drop if you already have unlocked Kyros.
- Fixed not being able to dodge while holding fire input with a rifle. Thanks for pointing this out Oceanbjorn, it helps us find a fix! [list]
- There is still an occasional issue when holding down fire + dodging. Occasionally it won’t automatically keep firing after a dodge. This will be fixed in an upcoming patch.
- Weapons fix coming soon.
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Narrative & Quests
- Dark Star Bait can now be re-acquired if the Dark Star Wurm is not killed on your first attempt.
- Fixed some visual issues within dialogue sequences.
- Kyros memories should now unlock correctly.
- Added an objective marker to Fading Light.
- Fixed an issue where The Hollow Heart quest would not update for spectating players.
- The Hidden Heart quest will now update the objective for the entire party.
- Added some missing VO for objectives.
- Fixed an issue where the Trial of Lingering Light Gloomtrace was not given to players after crafting.
- Marrow should now freeze correctly during The Lost Colony quest.
- Fixed an issue with “The Hollow Heart” quest getting stuck if it was initially failed.
- Fixed the Wurm’s Silk Acid Spray attack to not unintentionally one-shot players.
- Fixed an issue during The Archon Assault Main story quest that would cause it to fail for the client.
World
- Fixed an issue causing players to get soft-locked when traveling to Frostmarch for the first time.
- Players should no longer get stuck in chests when opening them.
- Fixed an issue where Highlands would fail to load when returning from a Codex Halls expedition.
- Fixed an issue where rain would persist after leaving the Seeds of Corruption final arena.
- Fixed an issue causing a permanent black screen after fast traveling within Frostmarch.
- Fixed an issue preventing players from panning through the entire map in Highlands and Frostmarch.
- Fixed and polished various environments - removing toe catches, plugging holes, asset collision etc.
- Fixed an issue where the Host and Client are unable to see the Void Dungeon and Gloom Dungeon portals in Highlands depending on the client’s quest state.
General
- Fixed various cases of getting stuck at the loading screen in Co-Op and Solo.
- Fixed an issue where non-English language setting could cause save issues.
- Solo players should no longer get kicked from Highlands sessions with the error "Kicked - out of sync with the server."
- Fixed an issue causing Mounts to clip through the ground.
- Special characters from various languages should now appear correctly.
- Selling items to a vendor should no longer cause a loss of menu focus.
- Fixed Weapon Masteries appearing locked after they are unlocked.
- Fixed an issue preventing players from switching between input devices.
- Fixed various localization issues.
- Fixed an issue where buffs from consumables would not persist after traveling.
- Fixed an issue where players would lose input when swapping Wayfinders after unlocking a Wayfinder Memory.
- Update NPC Action UI.
- Fixed the achievement “Kindling Light” - It will now properly grant when activating all the signal fires.
- Changing the Language now requires a client restart.
- Fixed the popup for summoning Wayfinders appearing twice.
- Fixed the new Airship logo - it’s now properly in glorious 5.1.
