It's spooky season once again, and Ghostlore is 25% off to get you into the festive mood!

As mentioned previously, Ghostlore has some pretty respectable numbers for a small indie game done by two people.

But what we are most grateful for are the players who have played the game for literally hundreds of hours. (seriously how do you guys do that)

As game developers, we believe that our job and our value is to entertain people and bring joy to their lives. Nothing makes us happier than seeing that we have been able to do this.

So, this update is focused on new endgame content that allows hardcore players to test their mettle against a variety of self-imposed challenges.

While traversing the depths of Hell, you might sometimes find these corrupted, purple portals. These portals will lead to the Chaos Arena, where you must fend off waves of enemies. Completing the challenge gives you a chance to enter the Orang Bunian's Realm, and/or a chance to skip to the next floor of Hell. Oh, and of course, loot.

Bear in mind that the death penalty for Hell Levels is still in effect, so it is up to you if you want to risk it or not.

In certain places (or non-places), you might meet a mysterious old lady with a backpack full of Keropok, crispy crackers made from prawns that is popular here in South-East Asia.
👀👀👀seems kinda sus👀👀👀
She asks if you would like to have something to eat, and insists on serving you some food with her special Keropok...
VERY VERY SUS...Do you accept?

Like many things in Ghostlore, this is based on an actual ghost story found here in Singapore. But this time around, I'm not going to tell you how this is all supposed to work. If you know, you know.

One more thing, you might occasionally find this enigmatic figure travelling the open road as well. Catching up with her allows you to claim the contents of her backpack as your spoils. But you better be quick about it though, she runs pretty fast for an old lady (Like your Encik's fabled grandmother).

We still have a couple of updates planned for Ghostlore and we are looking for feedback on our Discord[discord.gg]. But for now, this one goes out to all our loyal players out there.

Thank you, and happy hunting this Halloween!

Ghostlore is a made-in-Singapore game with a setting inspired by Singaporean and Southeast-Asian culture, so in order to commemorate Singapore's Independence Day on the 9th of August, Ghostlore will be on a 25% discount this weekend!

Shoutout to our sister countries, Malaysia and Indonesia, who will also be celebrating their Independence Days later this month too!

Ghostlore has succeeded far beyond our wildest dreams, with 30k+ downloads on Steam, 100k+ downloads across all platforms and a peak of 1000+ concurrent players.

Most of the work since launch has been to fix bugs found by players. We have also tried to address some of the common criticisms found in reviews. Here is a quick recap of the improvements since launch.

• We have greatly increased the size of the personal stash.
  
• Improvements and new options for the item filter.
  
• Improved character stat tooltips to correctly include all modifiers.
  
• Show items on ground toggle is now saved between sessions.
  
• Added option to bind a third key to actions.
  
• At crafters, you can now craft equipment and gems to the max level by holding the shift key.

We've worked on addressing the issues people have had with the end-game content. The hell gate maps should now be a lot more challenging but also more rewarding and feel less tedious. After killing a certain amount of monsters on an Institute or Hell Gate Map, keep a lookout for a red portal that will appear in the vicinity. The portal will transport you directly to the boss.

All Institute and Hell Gate maps will now only require you to kill 1 boss in order to proceed to the next map. We have removed the requirement for multiple bosses.

We realized that the unique affixes which only came from the shrine of balance led to the shrine being the only source of "perfect" items. We've added a new rare Tranquil Turmoil crafting material which adds this affix to any item.

Finally, Hell ingots now have a chance to drop from elites as well as bosses. The chance of hell ingots dropping also increases as you go deeper.

We've made some small changes here but are mostly still waiting for more feedback on which skills or combinations are too strong or weak. A big part of Ghostlore is being able to create absurdly powerful characters, so we don't want to nerf skills too much. At the same time there's definitely still a lot of work to be done to make some options viable and others less of an obvious choice. With the complexity of the skill system this is hard to do without feedback from players.

Adam and I both got our start in game development by modding, so personally we are happy to see that there have already been some mods for Ghostlore. Adam is happy to answer any modding questions or even help implement features modders want in our Discord. As modders, we strongly encourage players to go crazy and mod whatever they would like to see in the game. So in addition to the official mods, we would like to highlight some community mods that have caught our attention:

QoL changes by Godog

Russian Translation by Blueberry

InfiniPin by BlackNemo

Dual wield by Bonizin
Fair warning, this last one might not be good in all circumstances, but it did spark some discussion of where we want to go in future updates, as outlined below.

Our plans revolve around changes to itemization to make them more varied. Possibilities include:

• More gear slots for shirts, pants, boots etc.
  
• Visual customization and more visual variety
  
• Proper dual wielding
  
• Legendary items with unique affixes and designed around a theme
  
• Affixes that add or modify skills to a character
  
• Cosmetic pets that can pick up gold or items

This is going to be a major update, akin to what we did for the skills overhaul and post-game overhaul. We will continue to release smaller updates and fixes, but the major item update will likely be only done next year.

In the meantime, Ghostlore is 25% off for the Steam Summer Sale, please enjoy the game and keep the feedback coming!

Balance Changes

• Hellgate level size now grows much less slowly.
  
• Hellgate monster level increases by 5 instead of 4.
  
• Added chance for hell levels to roll some affixes from institute pool.
  
• Lower base ingot drop chance, Boost in ingot drop rate from hell level depth.
  
• Increased chance for map data to spawn rare.
  
• Slightly increased monster level scaling for base story.
  
• Completing the lead ghosthunter new class quest now gives player a free skill respec book.
  
• Increase to potion cooldown time.
  
• Reduced fury, trigger on critical hit chance.
  
• Trigger on movement skill now grants cast speed increase on trigger.
  
• Slightly reduced aphotic lurker, stone guardian damage.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed hell map generation for large hell maps having a misaligned pathing grid.
  
• Fixed crash when too many poison vial instances.
  
• Fixed player being trapped in sewer if they kill go back to normal sewers after end of game and kill all the waves.
  
• Fixed Kenchanaraya Ruins sometimes not generating correctly.
  
• Fixed elemental mastery scaling incorrectly, causing exponential damage growth.
  
• Fix for csv mods and item filters when game is played from places where comma for decimals is used (game will always expect periods for decimal points).
  
• Fix re-awakening item only removing part of the affix.
  
• CSV mods can now create new items.
  
• New steam leaderboard for maximum hell depth reached.
  
• Fixed map data locked icon not clearing until game is restarted.

• Nerfs to summons damage scaling.
  
• Reduced weretiger family attack speed buff.
  
• Fixed assigning RB and LB to skills on controller.
  
• Added credits for Toki Pona.

Update 1.003

• Fix for csv mods.