Hey everyone,

It's time for the first content update to Conquest Dark since the Early Access release. This update focuses on the most requested features by the community, along with quality of life improvements, bug fixes, optimizations and balance changes. Not all community requests made it into this update, and some didn’t work out as well as expected and were dropped (the hardcore mode toggle, for example).

This update also changes some of the underlying mechanics of the game and may result in a different gameplay feel than what you're used to. The same builds might not be as effective and character power in some parts may not be comparable to what the previous version of the game had. Some things might be more off balance than they were previously and will require additional balance patches. Before judging the new changes too quickly give them some time and then provide feedback through Steam or our Discord channel.

Major Features:

Improved Character Creation

• Character Race, Class and Origin can now be picked separately. Character visuals and traits are still under reroll, as I wanted to leave a bit of that randomized roguelite feeling to it. It's worth noting that the character traits are there just for flavor and are so minuscule that they don't really matter. Don't worry about rolling perfect ones.

Damage Meters

• Added damage meters that record and display the total damage done by abilities and some other damage sources. You can turn this feature on from the options and also bind a hotkey to toggle it during gameplay. Holding down the activation key while the damage meters are active will reset them. This feature will be further enhanced based on player feedback and needs.

Gameplay:

• Soul Coins, Corrupted and Dark Soul Fragments are now affected by soul attract range and are pulled toward the player when nearby.

• Bleeding can now once again cause the player to lose lives, but it cannot deal the final fatal damage.

• Characters can no longer lose multiple lives from a single source of damage. This applies to both the player and enemies.

Developer Notes:
The bleeding system has been controversial from the beginning and one of the earlier hotfixes tried to fix it but unfortunately introduced other problems and imbalance in the game. The above changes aim to bring back the original bleed without making it too punishing, especially with the changes to how the player can lose lives.

User Interface:

• Added alternative keybindings for movement and menu navigation. By default, these are bound to the arrow keys.

• Added an option to lock the mouse cursor to the window.

• Improved existing Game Guide entries and added new ones.

• Reroll Tokens are now displayed alongside other resources.

• Added kill counter back to the game. This is now tied to Damage Meters UI.

• Removed Zordolf twitter/X button.

Visuals:

• Mirage type enemies now have more noticeable visual effects.

• Increased the size of Souls and made them stand out more.

• Disabling visual damage on player characters now also affects Death Touched characters during character creation.

Misc:

• Updated Unity Engine to 6.1 version.

• Added an option to reset all progression.

• Rewrote the save system from scratch, which should now result in fewer issues with some corner cases that led to loss of progression. Note: you should avoid quitting the game or Steam using Alt + F4 as this can still lead to corrupted save files. Additionally this does not affect how Steam Auto-Cloud Sync works and it might cause separate issues. In some cases you might want to turn this feature off in Steam for Conquest Dark.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a bug with Projectile Duration stat that prevented it from working correctly.

• Fixed a bug that sometimes displayed an incorrect amount of Dodge and Movement Charges on gear.

• Fixed a bug where the Thief's Daggers were showing an incorrect number of runes in the rune category selection.

• Fixed a bug where Eye of the Berserker was not applied to the first projectile attack performed while it was active.

Balance:

Energy Generation

• All Primary Attack Abilities (Weapon Sets) that can hit multiple targets now have diminishing returns on energy generation to even out the differences between them. Single target abilities always start very strong and multi target abilities catch up on later once they start hitting between 5 to 10 targets. Energy generation beyond 10 targets is now 0 in most cases. This will lead into a noticeable power drop especially on very late game arena builds. Energy generation on all energy generating abilities has been adjusted.

Hammer of Sol

• No longer generates energy from the AoE portion of the attack.

• Damage increased from 50% to 60%.

• Can now be imbued with Djur Rune (Projectile Split Chance).

Divine Purge

• Can now be imbued with Kar Rune (Attack Arc).

Stray Leg

• Damage increased from 80% to 100%.

• Damage to Stunned increased from 150% to 300%.

Thronebreaker

• Damage increased from 120% to 150%.

Destroyer's Axe

• Damage increased from 140% to 180%.

Arcane Orbs

• Damage increased from 120% to 150%.

Blade Dash

• No longer generates energy.

Dance of Daggers

• Energy generated per projectile increased from 5 to 10.

Band of Primal Power

• Proc chance reduced from 15% to 10%.

Shard of a Dying Star

• Base Range increased from 2 to 3.

Ancient Arrowhead

• No longer benefits from base projectile amount, but also no longer reduces the number of base projectiles to 1. Damage with abilities that originally had a base projectile amount of 1 remains the same, while abilities with a higher base projectile amount now benefit less. This item may receive further changes in the future updates.