Halls of Torment update for 31 August 2023

Hello Adventurers!

It’s time for an update! Those of you who have played on the beta branch will have seen most of the changes already. But there are a couple of new things in this update that didn’t debut on the beta branch. And of course we’ve also fixed some bugs that popped up during beta testing.

Highlights of this update are the two new characters: the Norseman and the Beast Huntress. Both feature ice based attacks, each in a different and unique way. In addition to this we have a couple of new abilities for you to try out. Two of them, the Ice Avalanche and the Flame Strike were playable in the beta version. But we’ve added two more: the Arcane Rift and the Spirit Warrior. We’re sure you’ll find something new in here that fits your combat preferences.

Without further ado, here’s a list of all the bigger changes. Please keep in mind that there might be some overlap between this list and the ones from previous beta updates.

Change Log | 2023-08-31

FEATURES

• New feature: Class Marks

  • Class Marks allow you to pick traits from a different class
  • To unlock a class mark you will need to finish the class master quests.
  • Those quests require you to reach agony IV on the character's stage of origin.
  • These quests superseed the character quests to reach level 100.
  • If you have already completed the level 100 quests those quests will be set as completed.

• New feature: Agony Mode

  • Agony Mode can be unlocked by defeating the Lord of a stage.
  • Monster count, monster health, and XP drops are dynamically scaled based on your performance
  • Each killed enemy increases agony, while monsters that are alive reduce agony over time.
  • Aside from monsters, only reviving reduces agony.
  • You may find ‘Uncommon Items’: stronger variations of items that you’ve retrieved previously
  • Additional champion monsters are spawning
  • Champions are randomized monsters with extra modifiers and abilities.
  • Champions can drop various rewards from ability scrolls, to uncommon items, gold, flasks, or an extra bucket for the well.

• New stage: Frozen Depths

  • Can be unlocked by defeating the frost knight on the Forgotten Viaduct.
  • New unknown enemies await with 3 unique bosses and a new lord.
  • The stage layout limits your movement and requires you to navigate carefully through the caves while avoiding getting encircled by foes.

• New elemental effect: Frost

  • Frost explodes and deals damage in an area when the affected monster dies or 20 stacks have been accumulated.
  • If the frost effect runs out it triggers with only half of its damage.
  • Frost deals damage based on the number of stacks.
  • The strongest hit that applied frost determines the area of the effect.

• New characters

  • Norseman

    • Dual wielding axe fighter boosting your physical abilities.
    • When he hits a certain number of enemies he unleashes a devastating Frost Nova.

  • Beast Huntress

    • Throws her spear with great force, piercing through the enemy lines and applying frost effect.
    • Has a hound that protects her from close enemies.

• New abilities

  • Ice Avalanche: an ice based attack with a diagonal pattern.
  • Flame Strike: close quarter defense or boss killer.
  • Arcane Rift: magic mines that deal devastating damage.
  • Spirit Warrior: summoned warrior that dashes through enemies.
  • Potion of Renewal: allows you to reroll abilities
  • Hallucinogenic Elixir: allows you to reroll items in a chest

POLISH & QOL

• All final stage bosses have lower health but they increase in difficulty over time.
• Potion of Oblivion now allows you to banish a trait without closing the trait selection.
• Discarding all items in a chest gives you XP worth 50% of your current total XP bar.
• You can now discard all abilities from a Scroll of Mastery which will also give you 50% XP of your current total XP bar.
• Some fixes regarding item and monster positioning in level geometry
• Picking up quest items or ingredients will show a short text telling you what you’ve picked up
• Potion quantities have been adjusted (max amount and bottles)
• Many more tweaks, adjustments, and bug fixes that would either go beyond the scope of this post or we didn’t track properly.
• Retrieving potion bottles doesn’t use up the well any longer. Also, when you survive a run, all bottles in your bag will be automatically added to your potions (no purchase necessary).

If you want to see a more detailed listing of changes that happened while we were preparing this update, you can have a look at this forum thread:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/2218750/discussions/3/3801652762283956029/

What's Next?

After this update we’ll have to monitor the game for a couple of days and make sure that there are no major problems. At the same time we are going to look at some of the QoL and accessibility issues many of you have pointed out and see if we can find fitting solutions for them. It may take a couple of iterations until we can address all of them. Of course we will also continue to work on more content, but our main focus for the next update will be more towards getting rid of some of the rough edges in the game.

We hope you’ll enjoy this update as much as we did!

Cheers! 🥕
Chasing Carrots