Greetings Dice Slingers!

Today is the day; 1.0 is finally out! It plays better, performs better, and has more features than ever before, largely thanks to all the feedback and help we have received from our amazing community.

We’re also running a 30% launch discount, so if you’ve been on the fence about picking up SpellRogue, now’s the perfect time to jump in!

But enough introduction, let’s get to the good stuff!

Sefyra the Windcaller

With 1.0, we’re introducing our fourth playable Dice Slinger: Sefyra the Windcaller!
Sefyra brings a whole new layer of depth with mechanics like shifting Spell placements, replicating Dice, adjacency bonuses, Static buildup and discharge, Conduit, Cascade, and more.

She’s the most intricate Slinger yet. Our beta testers have called her the most complex, but also the most rewarding. If you're into high-skill, high-synergy gameplay, Sefyra might just become your favorite.

Final chapter and True Ending

We won’t spoil too much about what the final chapter entails, but as you win runs with each of the Dice Slingers, you will start to piece together clues leading to a final challenge. When you reach it, we recommend not jumping in on too high of a Descent stage!

Daily Challenge

In 1.0, we’re introducing the Daily Challenge, found in the lower left corner of the character select screen. To unlock it, you’ll need to reach level 3 with all characters. That way, you’ll be familiar with the core gameplay before we start throwing curveballs your way.

Each Daily Challenge run uses the Custom Game system from previous updates. Expect some game-warping modifiers, so that every day brings a fresh and unique challenge to tackle.

We also include Leader Boards for each Daily Challenge, so you finally can get some well-deserved validation once you get that once-in-a-lifetime run together.

Enemy redesigns and new abilities

We’ve revisited many of the enemies you’ll encounter and updated them to stand out more from one another. The goal was to make early-game encounters more engaging and memorable, with tweaks that give each foe a more distinct identity.

We’ve also adjusted enemy group compositions across the game. You can expect new combinations, fresh status effects, and different attack patterns that should keep even seasoned players on their toes.

Bonus Rare Draft

With the new enemies adding some fresh challenges, we also wanted to make sure the game stays fun and fair. To help with that, we’re now giving players a draft of all Rare Spells after defeating an act boss.

This makes boss victories feel even more rewarding and gives you a great opportunity to pivot your build with a powerful new spell to completely shift how you approach the next act.

Game mechanic changes

We’ve been tinkering with a few parts of the game, especially some of the core “archetypes” in the existing classes that we’ve wanted to improve for a while.

One example is the “Dice Spent” mechanic for Fire Spells. Previously, it required splitting dice en masse and dumping them into the spell to boost it. While that was fun and played well, it didn’t mesh with the Fire Countdown archetype, since the countdown reduction effects did not increase the amount of dice spent.

Our solution? The boost now triggers on any countdown reduction. You can still feed the spell with low-value dice, or repeatedly hit it with -countdown effects to boost the Spell!



And that’s just one example. We’ve made many more changes like this across the board. Underused mechanics like Blessing, Ether, and Sapling have all been redesigned to be more useful and engaging. These changes should open up new viable crossover strategies and breathe life into combinations that didn’t quite land before.

Tons of new content

We’ve made tons of small tweaks and additions throughout the game. These, among many others, include a Rune that “autocasts” its spell, a boss artifact that amplifies all buffs you apply to yourself (such as Foresight, Power, or something even stronger!), and a three-eyed mouse that you can bring along on your journey to either cleanse or further corrupt, creating one of the weirdest and most powerful artifacts in the game!

Be sure to check out the full list of changes in the patch notes, or explore the in-game Codex using the new search function.

Making the World Come Alive

Along with all the new content and mechanics, we’ve worked hard to make the world feel more alive and immersive. This includes a brand-new intro animation that sets the stage by detailing the events leading up to the start of the game.

We’ve also added new map events that offer interesting choices while shedding light on the history and current state of the world. Plus, Spells now have flavor texts, adding lore and hints towards the origin of magic, the Dice Slingers and the invading Voidbringers.

New Translations (and Upgraded Old Ones!)

The translations in SpellRogue have also received some major love by being professionally localized. We now fully support Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Polish, French, German, Spanish, Russian and Brazilian Portuguese. We encourage all players that have previously found the localization lacking to try out the game again. Bon voyage!

Steam Deck Verification!

We’ve also made a bunch of improvements to increase playability on small screens, with gamepad, and on Steam Deck, specifically. As a result, SpellRogue has now received the Steam Deck Verified status. For many of us, the Deck is the preferred way to play SpellRogue, so we are very proud to have it reflected in the game's rating. For the best experience on smaller screens, we recommend enabling the Big Font setting (which the Deck boots up with automatically)!

And much more

This is just the highlights, but there are many more changes, which we have also gone into more detail about in the previous Dev Blogs here: #14, #15 and #16.

Thank you

And finally we want to give a heartfelt and big thank you to everyone who’s played SpellRogue over the years. When we started work on this game almost 5 years ago, we truly could not foresee where this journey would take us, but it wouldn’t have happened without our players! Shout out to everyone who has played, reported bugs, discussed balance and been patient with us as we developed our voice and vision for SpellRogue. Thank you!

SpellRogue 1.0:

Overview:

• New playable character, Sefyra the Windcaller!
  
• New mysterious “True Victory/Ending”!
  
  
• 108 new Spells, 25 new Artifacts, 4 new Rituals, 8 new Runes!
  
• 56 new Mutators, 8 new Random Events!
  
• Major overhaul of enemies, new/redesigned encounters and effects!
  
• Added “Daily Challenges” with leaderboard!
  
• Major design & balance pass on Spells, Rituals & Artifacts, with much more combo potential!
  
• Added 4 new “Descent” difficulty stages, new & improved Mutator drafting system!
  
  
• Feature: “Undo Turn” button in combat.
  
• Feature: Autosave after each action in battle.
  
• Feature: Added “Morph” Spell mechanic.
  
  
• Design: Disenchant Spells and Rituals directly in inventory.
  
• Design: Added a Rare Spell draft after Bosses.
  
• Design: Added Ritual to Shops.
  
• Design: Rework of some Enchanted Dice & Spell Debuffs.
  
• Design: Tweaked Spell Rarities, and increased chance for random Runes.
  
• Design: Limited max dice to 12 at any one time.
  
• Design: Improved map generation algorithm.
  
• Design: New Achievements & Unlock Objectives
  
  
• Translations: Major improvements for languages: Simplified Chinese, French, German, Spanish, Russian.
  
• Translations: Added 5 new languages: Japanese, Traditional Chinese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Polish.
  
  
• Graphics: New dice look.
  
• Graphics: Improved VFX for Spells and enemy actions.
  
• Graphics: New enemy graphics & animations
  
  
• Audio: New & improved sound effects
  
• Audio: New music (including unique boss music), added map & battle ambience
  
  
• QOL: Search function in Codex (on mouse & keyboard).
  
• QOL: Added "Game Speed" setting.
  
• QOL: Added "Mute in background" setting
  
• QOL: Rituals & Potions now shows preview of effects
  
• QOL: Improved Spell inventory drag-and-drop behaviour
  
• QOL: First boot auto selects the same language as Steam.
  
  
• UI: Added lore blurbs when inspecting Spells (in english).
  
• UI: Custom Mode screen overhauled
  
• UI: Improved text sizing, font and overall readability.
  
• UI: Polished gamepad controls, added “inspect mode" overlay. Steam Deck improvements.
  
• UI: Added tutorial for Shards, new & improved warnings.
  
• UI: Added intro video and in-game lore/story.
  
• UI: Improved battle effect text animations
  

And tons more undocumented changes including bug fixes throughout the game.

Full Patch notes

Since this post is already much too long, we have posted the FULL CONTENT CHANGELIST over on our website. It’s a bit much to parse all at once, so we recommend booting up the game and making sure to read tooltips as you go!

That's it! We hope you enjoy 1.0, and as always, we’d love to hear your feedback on the many changes and how the balance feels in 1.0 to help us finetune everything in the coming days and weeks.


May your dice roll true 🧙

Tim, Thorbjørn & Paw