Christmas is approaching and we have decided to give you our personal gift: a huge update for Batora: Lost Haven, with numerous contents based on your feedback, that will improve your gaming experience and make you want to relive Avril's interplanetary adventure once again! Or, in case you have yet to try it, find out what we thought for you.

Here's all the news from our latest Christmas patch, available today on PC and soon also on consoles!

Gameplay improvements

• Improved first hour of the game - following your suggestions, we improved the Oniric Arena both in terms of balance and the proposed tutorials, which are now to a lesser extent
  
  
• Improved impact intensity feedback of the combat system - to enhance the visual impact of the combat, we improved the freeze hit both visually and concretely, to make the mob freeze for an instant after being hit; we have also improved the camera shake, the shaking that allows you to receive feedback when the enemy is hit; sounds have been fixed to enhance the SFX on impact. We also added a slow-mo VFX at the end of a fight when the last enemy is defeated while in direct zoom camera on it.
  
  
  
  
• Improved combat system - to ensure that you can ring combos quickly and avoid having to wait for the animation for the second hit, now the system remembers the keys you pressed before Avril can perform the actions. If you pressed dodge immediately after the hit that has not yet been inflicted, the system will remember the sequence you entered and execute the moves one after the other. We also sped up the first attack of a physical combo.
  
  
• Pacing Improvement - to make the gameplay more varied and raise the level of challenge, we have increased the presence of hybrids, so as to increment the presence of mid-bosses throughout the game. We have also included hazards, and traps that make exploration more challenging, including spikes that come out of the ground, flames that come out of the walls.
  
  
  
  
• Difficulty selector added - to allow you to choose the degree of difficulty to face the adventure and adapt it in the best possible way to your needs and abilities, you can now select 3 different difficulty levels - Loose, Standard, and Strict. With the two new modes, you can decide how challenging you want your experience to be. The selector will activate after the third game mission, making the start the same for everyone.
  
  
  
  
• Added indicator for earned endings - to help you better understand your progression level in the game, and also the endings you’ve unlocked, at the end of the game the system will clearly tell you which of the 4 endings you have unlocked. Furthermore, in the initial menu, mandalas will appear which will light up according to the unlocked ending, so as to let you know which you've already experienced and how many you can still try!
  
  
• Added indicators to enhance the choices - to highlight the importance of certain dialogues and choices, and help you understand which are the narrative crossroads that will condition your story, we enlarged the texts of the "Important Choices" and added a specific icon to the important choices, to accentuate the conqueror and defender paths

Technical Improvements

• Added frame rate uncap - to allow you the best possible experience and also the greatest customization from a technical point of view on PC, now you can unlock frames and also select v-sync on PC, selecting the limit of the framerate you prefer and decide whether to play with active v-sync or with variable refresh rate.
  
  
• Added full 21:9 support - all resolutions have been added for both UI and scene rendering, now compatible with all aspect ratios on PC, both 16:10 and 21:9, in a range from 1280x720 to 3840x2160.
  
  
• Added skip sequences - if you don’t want to listen to all the dialogues during the game, but only the most important ones in the cutscenes, you can now skip any sequence, except the game boot sequence the first time you start Batora: Lost Haven. The dialogues cannot be skipped automatically, but always manually.

• Improved Steam Deck Compatibility - We have improved the readability of text throughout the game. When starting Batora: Lost Haven, the game runs in fullscreen mode at the native Steam Deck resolution of 1280x800.
  
  
• More various bugs fixed
  Rebalanced health and defense of companions in NG+
  Fixed issues where the player could get stuck in some game environments
  Improved NPC spawn animations
  The game automatically launches in Windowed Fullscreen when on Steam Big Picture Mode

In the next few days, we will provide you with more details regarding the main innovations listed in this patch note, so that we can accompany you on a journey to discover all the ways your feedback has helped us improve Batora: Lost Haven!