Foreword

The long awaited update is finally ready and i am very happy to release it today. In my opinion this is a really important update and makes the game much more rounded in a lot of ways.
Thanks a lot for the continued support in form of positive reviews and constructive feedback. It certainly plays a big part in shaping the game and also keeping me motivated.
That said, keep the feedback coming and have fun with the new content!

New Maps

• Boar Mane Arena (Arena-like map)
  
• Abandoned Trail (Default map)
  
• Bridgeway (Default map)
  
• Mountain Retreat (Default map, a bit larger)
  
• Frozen River (Default map, a bit larger)
  
• City of Magonia (Default map, a bit larger)
  
• Arena of Magonia (Arena-like map)
  

Arena-like maps are a bit different compared to normal maps. They greatly increase in difficulty from wave to wave, and the waves are more unique, packed with champions and bosses.

New Features

• Progress Display under playerstats, including map completion times and total play time
  Playerstats can now also be opened from the mainmenu for each profile, by clicking on the exclamation mark
  
• Hardcore Mode including a graveyard with stat display of dead players
  
• Burn DoT effect - similar to the poison DoT
  
• New Bonfire effects "Lifesteal" and "Damage Block"
  
• Bonfire Properties which can strengthen additional spawned enemies
  E.g. Spiders can lay eggs which spawn additional spiders, Tanks share some of the damage they receive
  
• Enemy crowd control resistance
  E.g. Frozen enemies get resitance to freeze, for some time – to counter balance, buffed freeze
  
• Timed Quest Condition
  Complete a map in a certain time to get the quest reward
  Bounty Hunter quests can have time condition
  
• Relic system
  Relics are dropped on specific maps and are gathered for all players
  There are a total of 3 per tower type + 8 general relics, so 32 relics in total
  Relics can be unlocked by relic points and should have a stronger effect than a skill
  
• More Music at home, main menu and graveyard
  
• 6 Item Sets, with a total of 21 new epic items
  Set items give additional boni when equipped from the same set
  Added Set item to quest rewards
  
• New Postprocessing Stack
  Including some settings like brightness, contrast, sharpening, outline, in the options (settings only apply ingame)
  
• New Skills - 5 new General skills and 3 new Specialization skills per Tower Type
  
• Controls
  Added keyboard layouts to options (QWERTY, AZERTY)
  Camera can now be controlled by "wasd" / "zqsd"
  Moved Spell Hotkeys to shift-1 to shift-6
  Moved Tower upgrade hotkeys to F1 - F4
  

Other Changes

• Removed skill requirements of specialization skills at larger nodes
  This greatly increases the possibilities since not all previous skills need to be unlocked
  
• Gold popup over enemy
  
• Items on towers are now displayed when a tower is selected
  
• Scrollspeed of scrollable frames is increased
  
• Item equip sound ingame
  
• Siege wagons no blood effect
  
• Game data saved after each wave
  
• Added Damage Block stat to enemy info
  
• Added sound effect to freeze effect
  
• Better visibility of slow, freeze and poison effects
  
• Better visibility of priests heal spells, effect scales with healing power
  
• Camera movement now possible while game paused
  
• Towerbases scale on mouse hover (Feedback)
  
• Cycle through towers by tab click
  
• If Transmuter wont work because of not enough coal or the limit is reached, a popup appears
  
• Increased size of Priest towers slightly and added Pedestal at their feet
  
• Changed shared stash icons
  
• Unit lifesteal now also counts as heal and is displayed as such at the end of a game
  
• Optimized instantiation of Towers a bit (frame freeze)
  
• Enemy and Tower preview cameras now only active if necessary (optimization)
  
• Aura range indicator only active if tower has aura
  
• Overgrown Temple: changed item level from 3 -> 4 and increased difficulty slightly
  
• Changed visuals of world entries (normal and bonfire world, in main menu)
  

Balancing

• Reduced Poison duration stat of all items slightly
  
• Dot duration tower upgrade reduced from 25% -> 20%
  
• Lion Default cleave damage 0%->10%
  
• Normal enemies (not champions or bosses) only deal 70% areal damage
  
• Animal Den units default 5% lifesteal
  
• Animal Den units increased dmg by ~7%
  
• Increased XP gained from killed enemies by 5%
  
• Decreased damage penalty for Plague Bringers Hermit skill from 7% -> 6% per tower nearby
  
• Increased reward of first Investment Option (Gold pile): 150 g -> 175 g
  
• Increased third investment option (Bet wave 8) from 400 g -> 500 g
  
• Lifesteal stat of all items reduced between 15-20%
  
• Level 5 Animal Den skill reduced lifesteal 7% -> 5%
  
• Changed Bonfire Modifier "Regeneration":
  Enemies now gain 2 health regeneration per wave
  
• Slime hp increased by 10%
  
• Patron and Bishop both have the same crit chance of 20%
  
• Adjusted item quality distribution curve of dropped items
  masterwork quality was almost not possible to get via loot
  
• Incinerators afterburn effect now a higher damage burn effect
  
• Incinerator increased projectile speed, fires a bit ahead of target
  
• Incinerator flame duration also applies to afterburn duration
  
• Limited bonfire modifiers "fast walkers" and "Woundable" to a maximum rank of 1
  
• Effect of Permafrost Upgrade of Frostqueen from 7% freeze chance to 10% and 0.1 s freeze dur to 0.2 s per rank
  
• Frostqueen base freeze dur 0.5s -> 0.75 s
  
• Item Deepfreeze duration 0.1s -> 0.15s
  
• Mushrooms of Sporelord now also apply a DoT effect, based on Sporelords gold value
  Mushrooms damage now also scales with DoT dmg increases
  
• Tesla range from 5.5 -> 5.4
  
• Tesla second target upgrade 45% -> 40%
  
• Added 10% freeze chance for 1second to ice hail spell from items
  
• Plaguebringer range 6 -> 6.5
  
• Improved units engagement behaviour
  
• Mortars shrapnel also get aoe effect bonuses, but with slightly reduced effectiveness
  
• Reduced epic and unique item dropchances slightly
  
• Spell strength per level skill from 0.7% -> 0.6%
  
• Increased item droprate of champions and all champions can now drop items
  
• Common and rare item drops have a chance to be 1 tier higher
  
• Discharge tower damage per wave upgrade 90g -> 100g
  
• Item strenght scaling with itm tier is reduced slightly
  
• Cleave angle of units is now also scaled with AoE radius increases
  
• Manacost of a spell increases by 10% for each upgrade
  
• Artillery price 200 -> 180g
  
• All animal den units get default 2 damage block
  
• Added Cleave Damage mitigation stat to Units
  All units get default 15% cleave damage mitigation, animal den units 20%
  
• Decreased difficulty of Map 1-4 (Maple Forest, Lakeside Meadows, Rocky Coast, Battlement)
  
• Decreased Difficulty of Veteran mod by decreasing enemy movement hitpoints increase by 5%
  
• Decreased poison damage accumulation "speed" a bit
  
• Increased aoe radius of all cannon towers by 0.1
  
• Golden Seed Skill: 200g -> 150g (Start Gold, level 25)
  
• Archer Towers Stinger and Ballista animals (Boar, Stag) HP From 170 -> 160
  
• Frostsphere aoe dmg per pulse 10 -> 15, Icicle dmg 12 -> 13
  

Bugfixes

• If Profile doesnt exist, delete Button wont do anything
  
• After deleting a profile, delete button will update
  
• Army of the dead achievement fixed
  
• Empty item slots on towers now dont block mouse interaction
  
• Fixed calculation error for elemental bonus damage attribute of items
  
• fixed bug were summoned enemies would have too large Health bars
  
• Frozen enemies now cant attack
  
• Fixed achievement were a full inventory of items is required
  
• All item icons of dropped items have the same size
  
• Fixed description of stingers range support skill
  
• Initial UI Scale setting now set at load of scene
  
• Fixed alignemnt of item mouse interaction with item icon sprite of reforged items
  
• Units dont stack on top of each other anymore, when idle
  
• Fix in the damage calculation of units