Enemies:
• Frog King Breath attack preparation time 1.3s > 1.65s
• Siren no longer charms summons
• Lady of the Lake no longer charms summons
• Scarecrow missiles made slower and lower range
• Scarecrow attack area made smaller
• Wraiths dash made slower
• Exploding Fungi move slower
• Forest Spirit attach to ally significantly slower, higher cooldown and less stat bonuses
• Naga Warrior dash attack made slower
• Many ranged monster missiles made slower
• All Monsters -10% Damage
Summons:
• Summon charm effects completely disabled
• All summons now have better scaling defenses on higher darkness
• All summons ~+100% Life
• All summons minor damage increases
Blessings:
• Buffed Meteor
• Buffed Landslide
• Buffed Light Rays
• Buffed Lightning Orbs
• Buffed Time Field
• Buffed Lightning Bolt
• Attack Area blessing returned
Talents:
• Buff Sorceress Fire Dragon
• Buff Barbarian Ravage
• Fix Assassin Mind Reaper issue
• Fix Warrior Wolves not respawning bug
• Buff Warrior's Courage Multistrike chance
• Buff Warrior Undertaking Prime Damage increase
• Buff Warrior Heroic Training Damage 250% > 300%
• Buff Warrior Mythology Damage per Status 15% > 20%
• Buff Warrior Song of the North Damage at FUll Life 33% > 50%
• Buff Thrill of the Fight Heal 15 > 20
• Reduce Druid Hunger damage per second taken
• Reduce Druid Feast lifesteal
• Buff Druid Blood Moon form re-enter chance
Localization:
• Fixed various localization errors
Locations:
• Fixed missing cooldowns on certain gifts resulting in overly-high damage bonuses
Item Affixes:
• Summon Count no longer required to increase on_gain type summons (Onyx Dragons, Parrots, etc.)
• Summon Count affix cost reduced
• Summon Maximum Count now spawns a lot more
• Added Summon Life % affix
Uniques:
• Fixed Monster Ring spawn for enemies
• Fixed 215 localization issue
• Other unique fixes
Darkness:
• Reduced darkness monster attack speed scaling
• Reduced darkness bos life scaling
Bug Fixes:
• Ranger Clone animations fixes
• Fixed bosses not spawning
• Fixed Snowflake unique crashing game
• Fixed Serpent & Lightning Lynx minor issues
• Crash fix auras
• Crash fix AI

We’re shipping a fast patch to address some issues that quickly became apparent, so let’s go over them:

Difficulty:
Firstly, elite minions weren’t properly tested. Elite minions and variations (lightning, rupture, freeze) were added very close to the release. The game was largely balanced before they were finalized and with them the act became very overtuned. We also don’t track any metrics on what gear most players have and it seems we’ve missed the mark on the difficulty.
To adjust that, we are reducing enemy health by 30% and enemy damage by 20% across the board to bring them back to player level.

Enemies charming summons:
Speaking of enemies, one of the new ones - the siren that can charm your summons - has been especially problematic. The original idea was to have one or two waves in a run that can pose a greater challenge to summon builds, but in practice those waves show up way more often and make summon builds unviable in act 3.
We are reducing the spawn weight of those waves, as well as their chance to charm from 15% to 1% and the duration from 8 to 5 seconds.
The final boss of the act, the Lady, also has a charm ability, which is essential to her moveset, but we’ve reduced her charm chance from 20% to 7% as well. And finally, we have expanded the summoner build’s toolset to play around charm effects:

• The Titan infusion for the Stone Golem and Two Become One infusion for the Clone will now give charm immunity
  
• The Crystal Deer and Arbiter summons are also charm immune, by default.
  
• Summons will deal less damage when charmed, some heavy offenders like lamp genie have bigger reductions.
  
• Dragons and Clones bug one-tapping players has been fixed.
  
• Summons lose level bonuses when charmed, to not discourage leveling your summons.

On tier 2 and tier 3 items:
A lot of changes have been made since act 2 to make all affixes more balanced against each other. Revivals for example have been increased and added as a core affix to torsoes (instead of expert offers, which is now on jewels).
Master offers has long been much stronger than other affixes and its value had to be adjusted down. To compensate for that, we have allowed master offers to spawn on all item types. This should allow the same master offer builds, without overshadowing other affixes.

Item drops:
Additionally, we are buffing item drops by 100% to help with transitioning from Tier 2 to Tier 3 gear. We hope this will improve the playing experience and speed up farming times. Tier 3 rares are generally the same value as Tier 2 mythics, with Tier 3 mythics having around +60% affix value.

Experience:
Player experience gain has been increased by about 15%.

Other bugfixes:

• Fixed Hook leaving boss arenas & damage bug
  
• Fixed Infusions being offered to temporary blessings by Alteration Ritual
  
• Fixed “Cut The Traitor” achievement not tracking
  
• Fixed issue with getting stuck inside trees
  
• Fixed locations
  
• Data & Localization fixes
  
• Fix White HUD rectangle
  
• Fixed damage numbers appearing on the bottom left

The Lady then came, and with her, the tide,
Transforming the desert where Death did reside.

Marshlands blossomed and grasses grew tall,
Her presence a gift, a green overhaul.

~ Lore of the Land, vol. 4


Once the keeper of sacred springs and silver lakes,
the Lady now walks the still waters beyond the veil.
Her grace remained, intertwined with newfound loyalty to Death.

And thus was born the Darkmoor -
where nature thrives in shadow, nurtured by ancient bones.
The bitter cycle never ceases,
in a masquerade of life, each death feeds a bloom that should not be.


In the realm of the living,
Aegir, God of the Seas, has surfaced from his domain.

Even here, in the land of the dead, water answers his call.
Things long-thought drowned stir once more
and in the deep dark water,
something listens - and answers.

The campfire flickers, small but bright,
a final star against the night.
Two nights before the moon is new,
the Moor shall open - to seal your doom.

Act III: The Darkmoor opens on the 25th of April.

The legendary Snowsfather has returned to spread joy, laughter, and plenty of presents to all who join in the festivities! Don't forget to check under the Snowswatch tree, enjoy the winter scenery and have a happy holiday season!

We are closing the beta branch today and releasing the new Procedural Horde Patch!

• ENEMY SUBTYPES: Face off against new enemy subtypes, each with special powers for both minions and elites.
  
• WAVE VARIETY: Every run now features procedurally generated waves, creating new and varied encounters.
  
• PACT OF GREED: Unlock the Pact of Greed after defeating Act 2—play Act 1 with Act 2 difficulty and get Tier 2 rewards.

• A lot of changes in the formula have been made. Generally, items now tend to drop with fewer affixes, but every item is more tailored to specific builds and play styles. Additionally, more affixes can spawn on more item types to improve build making.
  
• The base affixes of items are now displayed in white and any rolled for or enhanced affixes in green.
  
• Item drops favor the currently played character.
  
• Fixed ranged affixes spawning on melee items and many other data errors.

• Discover new Tier 2 Uniques.
  
• New and powerful Act 2 Locations.
  
• Some new blessings and visual improvements to existing ones.

• Armory now sorts items based on value of currently selected affixes.
  
• Fixed armory tooltip render bug.

• Balance was focused on making more builds viable, especially on higher difficulties.
  
• Underused talents, blessings and item abilities received buffs to promote diverse builds.
  
• Some Tier 1 Uniques have been reworked to support more builds.
  
• Curses from locations like graves, coffins, etc are now temporary, to have less impact on final build.
  
• Bosses now give more Cosmic Essence - (4 → 8 Act 1, 8 → 12 Act 2)

• Fixed bug where selected Talent loadouts were not being saved.
  
• Bosses now try to stay inside the arena.
  
• Fixed bug with enemy damage multiplications.
  
• Fixed enemy projectile velocity too strong scaling.
  
• Fixed enemy projectiles multiplicative damage stacking.
  
• Fixed monster action use cooldown stat not working.
  
• Fixed monster attack times inverted scaling.

We've made a lot of various changes, bugfixes and other improvements – you can find the full list of those in the patch notes in-game.

Quick sidenote on our roadmap and what’s next:
This is the last big patch before the next Act update. We plan to quickfix this week, then go back to our work on Act 3.

Thank you to all the people from the community that helped us with their feedback and input on the beta branch!

Hey everyone,

We're opening the Balance branch that we talked about a few weeks ago.
The idea of this branch is to get balance updates tested and ready for the main one and have that iterative process be open. For anyone interested in giving us live feedback as we work on it, please join in and share your thoughts! Please keep in mind that updates will be regular and things may constantly shift up and down.
The balance branch will only exist for a couple of weeks, and the intent is to reopen it throughout the development every time after major updates.
In the Mailbox there, we discuss the direction we intend to pursue with Death Must Die's gameplay at length.

On a separate note we wanted to remind everyone regarding the September 1 patch - as we said in our Quality of Life 2 (The Armory) update in the mailbox, because we decided to prioritize the Armory, the September 1 patch will be delayed a few weeks.

WARNING!
Please note that participating in the Balance branch poses a risk to your save in general - backup your save that is located in:
C:\Users\USER\AppData\LocalLow\Realm Archive\Death Must Die\Saves\Slot.sav
Also please be aware that once you switch into the Balance branch you will not be able to switch back as your save will become corrupted if you try to. (There is data that doesn't exist in the main branch that is not transferable)

HOW TO PARTICIPATE (Note: The balance branch will be Windows only)
Go into your Steam Library, right click "Death Must Die" > Choose "Properties" > Go to "Betas" > Type "theshopkeeper" into "Private Betas" and select "Check Code". Then from "Beta Participation" select "balance - for testing balance changes", if it isn't selected already. Your game should start updating. If it doesn't update automatically restart your Steam.