Whispers from the Vault - Release 25's patch notes!
OFFICIAL
Hey Breakers!
OFFICIAL
Hey Breakers!
Release 25 is almost upon us, so let's check out the patch notes! Note: This patch is NOT live yet, but should be coming in the next few days. If you want to sign up for the Spellbreak Closed Alpha, you can do so here: https://playspellbreak.com
NEW FEATURES
Players can now choose which slot a gauntlet is equipped to when picking them up. If you tap the pickup key, it works like it does currently, but if you hold the pickup key down, you can press your left or right mouse button to choose if it should go into your left or right hand.
Players can now choose which slot a gauntlet is equipped to when picking them up. If you tap the pickup key, it works like it does currently, but if you hold the pickup key down, you can press your left or right mouse button to choose if it should go into your left or right hand.
Players now leave brief run trails behind them as they run and jump. They're disabled while standing still and more subtle while crouching.
This is a WIP and we're curious to hear what y'all think.
QUALITY OF LIFE
Revamped the drop system
Revamped the drop system
We've focused a lot on making the drop easier to use, both when playing by yourself and when playing with friends.
Players/teams now have a randomly assigned default drop portal that, if no other portal is selected, they will spawn through at the end of the countdown.
Increased portal selection time from 10s to 20s.
If you're playing with a squad, the first player to select a new drop portal shifts the selection for the entire squad; subsequent selections from any player will not shift the selection for the entire squad but for that player alone.
This allows a drop leader to select the default for their squad while giving individual players the agency to go elsewhere if they so desire.
Squadmates dropping through the same portal now spawn close together.
Movement locking has been removed from the end of the drop, so players have increased movement control.
No more overshooting a landing!
Continued iteration on the player info UI and HUD and moved the health and armor bar to the top left of the screen and added more information, including selected classes, badge, and party identifier while playing in squads.
This is ongoing... more updates coming soon!
Added a separate mouse sensitivity scale slider for when you're zoomed in.
This was a big community request... RejoICE!
Adjusted camera position and increased field of view from 85 while standing and 90 while moving to 103 across the board.
Another oft-heard community request. You can now see way more of the battlefield and your surroundings.
BALANCE CHANGES
Movement
Reduced base sprint forward speed by 10% (from 6.75m/s to 6.075m/s)
Movement
Reduced base sprint forward speed by 10% (from 6.75m/s to 6.075m/s)
Don't panic! Keep reading...
Armor
Reduced starting max armor to 20 from 75.
Reduced starting max armor to 20 from 75.
Again, don't panic and keep reading...
Fixed the longstanding "bug" where if you had high max armor and swapped to a belt without high max armor and then swapped back, your armor would be lost. You should no longer lose that armor when swapping between belts with different max armor values.
Some good quality of life here.
Items
We've overhauled nearly every item (amulet, belt, boots) in the game! They've been streamlined, standardized, in many cases re-stat'd and renamed, powercreeped, and more. We wanted items to remain powerful but provide more "good" choices while reducing bad choices and treasure system bloat. Items should provide base functionality so tradeoffs or upgrade potentials between different items are more clear. (As an incidental, the treasure system has been "flattened" so higher rarity items will no longer be more common than a lower rarity item in absolute terms.)
We've overhauled nearly every item (amulet, belt, boots) in the game! They've been streamlined, standardized, in many cases re-stat'd and renamed, powercreeped, and more. We wanted items to remain powerful but provide more "good" choices while reducing bad choices and treasure system bloat. Items should provide base functionality so tradeoffs or upgrade potentials between different items are more clear. (As an incidental, the treasure system has been "flattened" so higher rarity items will no longer be more common than a lower rarity item in absolute terms.)
For each slot, there's a single common and a single uncommon item and then two more items per slot per rarity, which means there are now only eight items per slot. This is definitely a reduction! A lot of the items that were retired were very underused or very niche and while there's an argument to be made for items like this to have value, we wanted to try the game without them and reserve their effects for possible exploration down the line.
Let's go through all of the items!
Amulets
All amulets now increase your maximum mana, scaled by their rarity.
All amulets now increase your maximum mana, scaled by their rarity.
No matter what amulet you equip, it increase your maximum mana, allowing you to cast more spells and have improved mana regeneration.
Common Amulet - Max Mana: +15
Uncommon Amulet - Max Mana: +30
Rare Amulet of the Wanderer - Cast Speed: +20%, Max Mana: +45
Rare Amulet of the Berserker - Sorcery Cooldown: -35%, Max Mana: +45
Epic Amulet of the Slayer - Spell Damage: +15%, Max Mana: +60
Epic Amulet of the Survivor - Drain Health: 25%, Max Mana: +60
Legendary Amulet of the Scribe - On Rune Use: Refresh Sorceries, Cooldown: 5s, Max Mana: +75
Legendary Amulet of the Behemoth - Spell Damage: +10%, Cast Speed: +15%, Max Mana: +75
Belts
All belts now increase your maximum armor, scaled by their rarity.
All belts now increase your maximum armor, scaled by their rarity.
No matter what belt you equip, it increase your maximum armor. This is why we lowered the starting max armor. Also note the armor scaling slows down as rarity increases, allowing players at different rarity tiers to be on more equal footing.
Common Belt - Max Armor: +20
Uncommon Belt - Max Armor: +40
Rare Belt of the Slayer - Rune Cooldown Speed: +20%, Max Armor: +55
Rare Belt of the Wanderer - Max Rune Charges: +1, Max Armor: +55
Epic Belt of the Scribe - On Rune Use: Damage Resistance: +95% (1s), Cooldown: 5s, Max Armor: +65
Epic Belt of the Survivor -Damage Resistance: +20%, Max Armor: +65
Legendary Belt of the Behemoth - Damage Resistance: +10%, Max Rune Charges: +1, Max Armor: +70
Legendary Belt of the Berserker - Max Rune Charges: +2, Rune Cooldown Speed: +20%, Max Armor: +70
Boots
All boots now increase your maximum run speed, scaled by their rarity.
All boots now increase your maximum run speed, scaled by their rarity.
No matter what boots you equip, they increase your maximum run speed. Sorry for the panic above around max sprint speed! While now your sprint speed with the fastest boots is slower than previous patches, you can more consistently move faster with any boots instead of having to make that tradeoff.
Common Boots - Run Speed: +5%
Uncommon Boots - Run Speed: +10%
Rare Boots of the Scribe - On Rune Use: Run Speed: +35% (5s), Run Speed: +15%
Rare Boots of the Berserker - Immune: Shock, On Lightning Damage Taken: Run Speed +40% (5s), Run Speed: +15%
Epic Boots of the Survivor - On Crouch (1s): Invisibility, Run Speed: +20%
Epic Boots of the Behemoth - Immune: Shock, Toxic Puddles, Ice Patches, Run Speed: +20%
Legendary Boots of the Slayer - Triple Jump, Max Jump: +25%, Run Speed: +25%
Legendary Boots of the Wanderer - Invisibility (5s) every 10s, Run Speed: +25%
OPTIMIZATIONS
We've spent a considerable amount of time on performance this patch and have seen some big improvements across the board in FPS, hitching, memory usage, and more. While there's still more work to be done, you should have much better performance in this patch!
We've spent a considerable amount of time on performance this patch and have seen some big improvements across the board in FPS, hitching, memory usage, and more. While there's still more work to be done, you should have much better performance in this patch!
Significant performance optimizations, especially for lower-end CPUs.
New mesh drawing pipeline batches multiple meshes into one draw call, reducing CPU overhead when submitting commands to GPU.
Improved batching when rendering shadows and depth maps.
Depth prepass of large structures reduces GPU usage in heavily occluded areas.
More granular sublevel streaming reduces the total number of primitives in the scene.
Reduced framerate hitches, especially in dense areas of the map like Fort Halcyon.
Fixed a stall when streaming in a new sublevel where the textures haven’t finished streaming in yet before the level becomes visible.
Fixed some garbage collector stalls when streaming in new levels.
More granular sublevel streaming to amortize loading costs over time.
Reduced memory usage.
Optimizations to geometry complexity and texture sizes.
Fixed a bug in the netcode that would cause rubber-banding when running at very high framerates.
If you previously had to cap your framerate to prevent weird blipping and rubberbanding, that should be fixed now! Time to uncap those framerates!
VISUAL AND AUDIO CHANGES
Numerous skills have VFX associated with them to better communicate who’s buffed or debuffed.
Numerous skills have VFX associated with them to better communicate who’s buffed or debuffed.
These are very much a WIP!
Visual polish and minor bug fixes on the Bug Hunter and Patchwork skins
Updated VFX for the drop landing
Various UI improvements to make exile, circle, level up, and team alerts more informative and consistent for players
New revive animation
Removed the "grunt" sound when being hit hard
UGNH
MAP CHANGES
There are no map changes in this release. Look forward to a whole bunch in the next release!
There are no map changes in this release. Look forward to a whole bunch in the next release!
BUG FIXES
Players can no longer change internal engine configuration by editing their engine .ini files.
Players can no longer change internal engine configuration by editing their engine .ini files.
This is only engine properties such as rendering parameters and not game-settings for keybindings, sensitivity, etc. This was done due to some easily editable options that gave players certain advantages. Further work around this is on-going. You can still edit GameUserSettings.ini as before.
Fixed a bug that prevented the damage overlay vfx on the character from working after the player had been invisible
Spectating players can no longer bring up the emote radial
Potions and armor shards no longer become invisible when the player crouches
Brand new players will be assigned a random character skin upon login if they don't select one
Fixed a bug that was sometimes preventing players from selecting some game modes when switching between server regions
Fixed a bug that prevented players from selecting an emote to play while the build or inventory menus were open
Fixed a host of map related bugs reported by the community
