Update 1.0 Changelog

[The Baron]

Be warned that this changelog may contain spoilers about the update!

Features

General

- Crystal Hunt game mode added.

• Choose custom difficulty options and starting backgrounds.
  
• Hunt for crystals to progressively learn new spells and abilities.

- Added a shop: Sell loot you find in the dungeons, and buy increasingly better weapons and gear.

- Earn gold in classic B&S wave-based arena gameplay along your progression.

- Added the Dalgarian Dungeons, a set of mystical ruins from the past which hold a dark secret.

- New golem enemy

- Implemented a Skill Tree, with 78 skills added

• Each Path has twelve skills spread across three tiers.
  
• A number of “Dual-Path” skills which interact or relate to two different Paths become accessible when more than one Path is unlocked.
  
• The skill tree is very modder-friendly, and provides a framework to allow modded content to be unlocked as part of regular Crystal Hunt gameplay.

There are five Skill Paths:

• Fire: The classic fireball spell, and a variety of new abilities involving igniting and charring your foes.
  
• Lightning: Spray chain lightning, electrocute your enemies, throw homing weapons and decapitate foes with lightning arcs. Can draw magic from other spells or imbued weapons to spread status effects to shocked enemies.
  
• Gravity: Push enemies around with physics, throw yourself through the air, hover and slam foes into the ground.
  
• Mind: Manipulate objects with Telekinesis upgrades. Slow time, enhance your reflexes and archery. Dive into Hyperfocus to briefly slow time to an incredible crawl, while you gain massive strength.
  
• Body: Brutal abilities for both armed and unarmed combat. Cheat death, ricochet thrown weapons, tear foes limb from limb.
  
• Staffs retain their on-slam abilities, but the on-button-press abilities have been turned into late-game skills given their power.Staffs retain their on-slam abilities, but the on-button-press abilities have been turned into late-game skills given their power.

- Over 30 new weapons added for a total of 76. Most weapon types now have one weapon for each tier.

- 4 new armor sets added based on armor from new factions. There are now 10 armor sets and 90 individual armor pieces.

- Added significant lore about the world of Blade and Sorcery, which you can discover through notes found scattered in the dungeons (and a few other places too).

- Some lore from the ancient Dalgarian civilization is written in a new Dalgarian language. Players have the option to translate Dalgarian text automatically into their native language; or hardcore players can instead learn to read the language yourself (for languages other than Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Thai).

- New tiered factions and enemy types: The pirate Outlaws, the druid Wildfolk, soldiers of the Eraden Kingdom, and the Sorcery-obsessed cultist fanatics of The Eye. Each faction has their own set of lore that can be discovered.

- The wheel inventory has been completely replaced by a more intuitive system involving a Dalgarian device.

- A new Stash system has been implemented in Crystal Hunt. You can store and retrieve items you buy (or loot you find) in your Stash and retrieve them from your item book.

- Items and furniture dropped or stored in the player’s home will also persist across level loads, allowing you to furnish your home with items found in dungeons.

- The Ruins map has been completely overhauled into a new map: Sanctuary.

- Added full translations for all text in the game across the following languages:

• English
  
• French
  
• Traditional Chinese
  
• Simplified Chinese
  
• German
  
• Italian
  
• Japanese
  
• Korean
  
• Portuguese
  
• Spanish
  
• Thai

Enhancements / Changes

Major

- Mana has been removed; spells can be cast without restriction aside from spell casting speed.

• All spell charge speeds have been refreshed.
  
• Spell merge charge speeds have been slightly decreased to make up for their power.
  
• Lightning Spray will now drain charge from your hand per bolt, requiring you to recast it after long.

- Combat gameplay values have been overhauled, such as weapon and enemy properties. Weapon tier now effects how the weapon reacts to armor and a number of other properties.

- A moddable Status Effect system has been implemented, allowing enemies and items to react to your spells and the environment.

• Some Status Effects such as Weightless, Electrocuted and Ignition can also be inflicted on the player by various sources and enemy abilities, and the existing ones have been modified to be more impactful on gameplay.
  
• Notably, Electrocution from lightning mages (and other sources) will slow your movement and casting speed.
  
• Enemies can now heat up and ignite from sources of heat in the environment and certain skills from the Fire tree. Ignited enemies will, horrifyingly, char and become brittle over time.

- Rebalanced all spells to better fit with the power increase from skills.

- Enemy spell casting has been greatly enhanced, with some enemies gaining access to a subset of skills from the skill tree. Certain enemies, especially ones from harder factions such as the Eye, will also be able to imbue their own weapons and arrows.

- The grab highlighter has been changed to a simple dot! Informational highlighters (e.g. when grabbing arrows from quivers) have been given a UI refresh.

- New loot and valuable items have been added - coins, figurines, pendants - and can be found scattered around the dungeons in various hidden places.

- Added openable chests containing loot and sometimes even Crystal Shards.

- The tutorial has been completely revamped

- Home has been updated with new vegetation and cave set dressing

Minor

- Sandbox waves have been overhauled to feature the new factions.

- Arrow quivers are now wearable on your hip holsters.

- Grabbing at a worn quiver will now always retrieve an item (e.g. an arrow) from it. To grab the quiver, hold trigger while you grab. The UI has been updated to indicate this.

- Outpost Dungeons has had a lot of minor upgrades and optimizations, including the new rivers and oceans, as well as new props.

- Many performance improvements across the board.

- The wrist health UI has been removed by default to improve immersion. You can see your health in the new Inventory system, and you can always turn the old wrist UI back on in the options menu.

- Oceans and Rivers have had complete in-house visual overhauls

- Enemy detection has been fixed and rebalanced.

- The item book now sorts items by tier first rather than alphabetical order.

- The map UI has had a complete refresh.

- In the item book, a greatsword category was added. The exotics and tools category are
removed with the weapons being put in other categories instead.

- Enemies now only carry 6 arrows with them, to prevent endless sniping and to incentivize buying your own quivers.

- Small items can now be worn on the back, such as daggers and small axes.

- Enemies are now much heavier, harder to throw around and harder to stagger.

- Most weapons/armor/items are renamed with new descriptions that fit into the lore of B&S.

- Enemies have more possible voice variations, instead of only one for males and one for females.

- Armor can now slow you down, reduce focus regain, and increase or decrease spell casting speed.

- Added credits.

- Enemies are a little easier to grab on their grab points.

- Certain enemies now imbue their weapons and arrows.

- Citadel has been updated with new models and upgrades, as well as optimizations.

- Market has had a complete overhaul, and is now named Town Square.

- Arena has had touchups, with new textures, models and props.

- Canyon has had a visual overhaul, with new textures and models.

- Removed auto-retrieve on the Zipline tool (in favor of the new Stash system)

- Increased Zipline wheel’s top speed 😎 (Press forward while using it to go even faster by the way)

- You can store clothes and armor in your inventory.

- Refreshed textures on several of the older pieces of armour and clothing.

- The Gravity spell’s knockdown/stagger effect on throw and dual push has been nerfed slightly to balance it with the rest of the spells.

- Gravity Glide now cushions your fall more just before you hit the ground.

- Gravity Staff Slam now also pushes the player, if you jump while slamming it.

- The Falchion has been refreshed to fit into the world’s lore, and moved to a new spot…

- The Oar model has been reworked to fit other item artstyles

Fixes

- Enemies no longer play death voice lines when their head is cut off.

- Fixed several issues that made aiming fireballs at close-to-mid ranges much more difficult.

- Fireball guidance now kicks in over a short duration (< 0.5 seconds).

- Greatly increased performance of mirrors!

- Fixed an issue where slashing with a sword out of alignment caused a wooden sound to be played instead of a metal sound.

- Ambient fire, such as campfires and fireplaces, now react appropriately to objects placed into them. (Natural fire can’t imbue weapons).

- Raider armor (formerly Mercenary armor) and some other armor now have proper armor detection for metal parts.

- Imbued weapons that lose their charge should no longer occasionally continue to glow until reimbued. This also fixes cases where imbuing one item would make other item(s) glow.

- Fire-imbued staffs now spawn a directional burst of fireballs when the crystal end is slammed (previously all spawned fireballs would collide instantly and destroy themselves).

- You can now properly tele-grab a single handle with both hands.

- Fixed mirror not rendering correctly with spectator camera and screenshots

Modding

- LevelOptions type changed from `ThunderRoad.LevelData+Option` to `ThunderRoad.Option`

- `SpellCaster.magic` field changed to null-checked `SpellCaster.Orb` property

- Many, many changes to JSON files. It’s recommended that you make new JSON files where possible by copy/pasting the base-game files and editing them.

- Blade and Sorcery now has extremely rudimentary controller support, activated when no VR headset is connected. This allows you to test small changes without having to enter VR.

- Enabled modders to create their own unique skills and even entire skill trees. The base-game crystals can be recoloured to fit your tree, or you can use your own item.

Known Issues

- Transparent effects can’t be seen from underwater due to a limitation with the new water system