Champions
- Added a new class of enemy, “Champion”, to the game. Champions are a subset of Rare enemies, with unique names and more powerful abilities. 20 Champion enemies have been added for Season 2 across the game.
- Champions will be larger than other enemies and have an orange highlight to distinguish themselves as a Champion enemy.
- Champions are based on existing enemies but have added and altered abilities.
- Each Champion has three random mods, a prefix and suffix like other rare enemies, and a new Champion mod that grants it an extra ability.
- Champions can spawn in the Campaign, in Dungeons, and the Monolith, but they only spawn in areas of level 6 and above.
- Champions also always drop an item with a sealed Champion affix that depends on the Champion’s mod. For example, a Volcano Champion will always drop a belt with the “Volcano Champion’s” affix.
- Champion affixes are a subtype of personal affixes and, as such, cannot exist as shards.
- Items with Champion affixes are always Rare or Exalted.
- Examples:
- +1 Maximum Companions and Increased Minion Damage.
- Chance to cast Electrify on Hit and Chance to Cast Smite on Hit with Throwing Attacks (up to 10 times per 2 seconds).
- X Minions Teleported around you after you use a Traversal Skill and Increased Minion Damage.
- Increased Spell Damage and chance for Lightning Blast to chain 4 additional times.
- Ward Per Second and % of Current Health Converted to Ward when you directly cast a Necrotic Spell.
- Added Melee Damage and +1 Charge for Void Cleave.
- Champions also have a small chance to drop exceptional loot, such as a pile of Uniques.
- Champion encounters, and their rewards, can be influenced by nodes in the Weaver Tree.
Monolith and Dungeon Updates
Monoliths
Objectives
- Added new objectives in Monoliths.
- Slay X Champions.
- Slay X Exiled Mages.
- Activate Shrines until Ambushed.
- Open Lost Caches until Ambushed.
- Stabilize the Echo.
- Unstable Rifts will open throughout the zone. Find the Rifts, and slay all enemies that spawn to close them and stabilize the Echo.
- Completing this objective also awards bonus stability to the Timeline for all players in the zone (150% of the completion reward).
- Find the Cocooned Item.
- Slay enemies until one drops the Cocooned item.
- Completing this objective will drop Cocooned Uniques, an unidentified Unique of a specific base type (e.g. a Cocooned 1H sword).
- Identifying a Cocooned Unique will roll any Unique of that base type that is more likely to have higher levels of Legendary Potential levels or Weaver’s Will. Cocooned Uniques cannot reveal items that are exclusive drops from things such as Bosses.
Shared Monolith Timeline Unlocks
- Non-Empowered Timeline unlocks are now shared between characters that have access to the same stash.
- This means that if you have unlocked Empowered Timelines on one character, then another character with access to the same stash only needs to complete one Timeline to unlock Empowered Timelines (that Timeline must still be a level 90 Timeline).
- This doesn’t apply retroactively to existing characters, so you will need to complete them once more for Legacy characters.
Shade of Orobyss
The Shade of Orobyss now scales with area level.
- To compensate for the effect of this change, the Shade now has 42% less health and deals 20% less damage at baseline. This results in it having 50% more health and dealing 5% more damage than before at level 100.
- This does not change how the Shade scales with Corruption or distance from the center of the Echo Web.
Arena Echo Changes
- Arena Echoes have fewer waves overall and provide better rewards.
- Most enemies in the Arena are now move faster when they are further away from the player, allowing them to engage with the player faster.
- A random Champion now spawns at the end of the Arena’s last wave.
- Enemies spawn faster.
- Fixed the minimap not generating in some Arena Echoes.
- Fixed the wave count not showing.
Spire Changes
- In Spire objective Echoes, all Spires will now spawn with a Spire Guardian.
- Spire Guardians are special mini-bosses that guard the Spires in their Echoes.
- Spires will now wait to attack you until you are in combat with the Spire Guardian.
- While you are in combat with the Spire Guardian, the Spire can still attack you anywhere in the zone.
- Spires will have a protective shield around them and cannot be damaged until the Spire Guardian has been defeated.
Death & Loot Persistence
- When you die in an Echo, all items in a small area around your corpse are brought with you to the Echo of a World.
Other
- Improved End of Time and Monolith Hub visuals.
- Current corruption value for each Timeline is now shown on the world map screen so you don’t have to enter each Timeline to check its Corruption level.
- Timeline completion quests (the last Quest Echo in a Timeline) now reward significantly more experience, but have a limit based on the percent experience required for a character of that level to reach the next level.
- Echo objectives are no longer rerolled each time you repeat an Echo. Instead, they will always keep the same objective, even if exited and re-entered.
- Rustlands Arena traps are now deactivated during the rest period between every 5 waves.
- Improved game performance in Monoliths when there is a “Locate…” objective.
- Encounters in the The Fall of Ledria Quest Echo have been simplified.
- Echo repeated entrance abuse prevention:
- Re-entering Echoes that have been previously entered have a reduced amount of events, such as Nemeses or Exiled Mages, and drop less loot. This prevents us from having to drastically reduce the amount of content and rewards Echoes contains, as leaving and re-entering them on purpose was emergent gameplay and would be a very strong and unintuitive gameplay loop that we want to avoid.
- Added a message to Echo tooltips that have previously been entered, noting that random mechanics will be less likely to occur.
Dungeon
Key Charms
Key Charms are a new item in Season 2 that can be used at the entrance of any dungeon to modify your dungeon experience. There are currently two types of key charms: Portal Charms and Scale Charms.
Portal Charms
- Portal charms can be used at the entrance of any dungeon to create a portal that will take your whole party directly to the Boss.
- Using the Portal Charm will apply random floor modifiers to the boss as though you had fought through the dungeon normally.
Scale Charms
- Scale Charms can be used at the entrance of any dungeon to greatly increase the spawn rate of Loot Lizards found during that run.
- Scale Charms cannot be bought; they are only dropped by enemies.
Black Market Key Trader
- The Black Market Key Trader can be found in the Maj’elka Upper District and will trade three keys of any kind for a Portal Charm.
Respawning
- You can now respawn in dungeons by expending a key. You will respawn near the area where you died or just outside the boss area if you died while fighting a dungeon boss.
- During a dungeon bossfight, if you’re in a party and all players have died, only one party member needs to spend a key for the party to respawn and continue.
- A ‘Spectate’ button has also been added to the Death screen, allowing you to watch your party continue the fight while you are dead. You cannot move the camera while spectating.
Quests and Unlocks
- Completing Temporal Sanctum, Lightless Arbor, and Soulfire Bastion for the first time now rewards 2 passive points and 1 Idol unlock each by way of 3 new short quests for defeating their respective bosses.
- These quests also direct players to the alternate dungeon exit, which allows bypassing a portion of the Campaign. Completing all 3 dungeons in this way will earn players a total of 6 passive points and 3 Idol slots and skip a large portion of Campaign zones.
Class and Skill Updates
General Skill Changes
Skill Changes section contains Skill Bug Fixes as well, as some Changes are relevant to Bug Fixes to the same skill.
Ailments
- Time Rot’s base damage is now 60 (from 55).
- Time Rot, Doom, and Abyssal Decay now use different rules for being replaced when the afflicted character is at the maximum stacks of that ailment. They will only be replaced if the newly applied ailment would deal more damage than the remaining damage of an existing application of that ailment.
- For example, if you apply an Abyssal Decay that will deal 1000 total damage, since its stack limit is 1, any further attempts at applying Abyssal Decay will not apply the ailment unless the new ailment’s total damage exceeds the remaining damage of that existing stack. So after 50% of that Abyssal Decay’s remaining duration it will have 500 damage left, so a new application would need to deal over 500 damage total to replace it.
Evade
- Instant-cast abilities can be used immediately during Evade.
- The player can use abilities after stun effect ends if the player was stunned during the Evade.
- Movement has been made smoother for the game at more than 60 FPS.
- Evade is now smoother in Online mode.
- Evade no longer stutters at the edges of the map.
- The Evade animation no longer gets stuck if the skill is cast at the edge of an obstacle.
- Fixed an issue where Mages could get stuck after the Evade animation.
- Fixed an issue where the second cast of Evade would break if clicked quickly.
- Fixed getting stuck in Evade when used after skills such as Teleport, Transplant, and Void Cleave.
Bug Fixes - General Skills
- Movement Skills - bug fixes
- Doubled the max accessible path length for movement skills. This allows you to traverse over gaps that would take up to 60 units to walk around (from 30).
- Fixed a bug where skills that make you immune during movement did not prevent damage dealt to Ward.
- Fixed a bug causing some movement abilities to not adjust the character to the terrain.
- Fixed a bug where using a movement ability at the edge of a walkable area would sometimes cause the player to be moved in the opposite direction of where they aimed.
- Fixed cases where movement abilities could leave the player unable to move until another skill is used.
- Minions - bug fixes
- Minions will now avoid targeting enemies that are currently invulnerable.
- Fixed a bug which caused many minions to not receive the inherent 50% less damage taken from powerful abilities. In particular, all Acolyte and Sentinel minions suffered from this bug.
- Fixed a bug where minions sometimes won’t show up next to the player despite the HUD displaying them being alive.
- Fixed a case where minions were able to fight enemies while players are in a grace period.
- Fixed a bug that caused some minions to spawn in invalid locations.
- Fixed an issue where players’ grace period did not consistently apply to minions as well.
- Minions that are distant from the player or on the other side of the impassable barriers created at the start of the Haruspex Orian or Lagon boss fights are now teleported around the player shortly after the barriers are created. This excludes totems and other permanently immobile minions such as bone prisons.
- Manifest Armor and Wraithlord are now more responsive at high movement speeds, reducing instances of the minion “skating” and struggling to move to its intended destination in a timely fashion.
- Fixed a bug where a Downed companion’s revivable visuals would persist if the player respawned while the companion was Downed.
- Fixed a bug where abilities which replace Evade would not trigger “after Evade use” effects, such as Nihilis’s frenzy after Evade use.
- Instant abilities should no longer stop channeling abilities, such as in the case of casting Holy Aura while channeling Warpath.
- Fixed a bug where leech provided by skill trees could ignore effects such as Boulderfist’s “cannot leech” affix if the player had no other sources of leech.
- Fixed a bug where instant skills could not benefit from several effects that require a direct cast. For example Static, when directly cast, was not able to consume Abyssal Rite stacks from Sacrificial Embrace.
- Set the displayed mana cost of many subskills to 0. As these subskills can’t be directly cast, players are never required to pay their mana cost, so these non-zero values were just display errors. Examples include Void Eruption, Lava Burst, Axe Throw, Divine Bolt, Void Beam, Fissure, Summon Forged Weapon, Detonate Ground, Holy Trail, Spark Charge, Zap, Spark Nova, Shrapnel, Flame Burst, Lightning Wave, Summon Mirror Image, Frost Nova.
- Added subskill tooltips in many places within skill trees where they were absent.
- Reduced situations where Shield Rush, Bear Form Rampage and Flame Rush could move the player outside the map.
- The player now displays the correct combo skill animation when casting the ability in Online mode, even if multiple identical combo skills are selected in the bar.
- Fixed the combo skill iteration logic when adding multiple identical skills to the bar simultaneously.
- Improved appearance of some orbiting abilities (such as Hammer Vortex).
- Fixed a bug where removing a modifier that increased the maximum number of a companion, while having the maximum amount of that companion, would result in the extra companion being Downed instead of despawned.
- Fixed a bug in Online mode where casting abilities with near-zero mana would trigger the ability animation without actually using the ability.
- Improved directional movement of Shuriken projectiles and Sentinel’s Hammers with chain ricochet nodes in Online mode.
- Fixed an issue where abilities would reset their cooldown when transitioning between scenes in Online mode.
- Reduced instances of abilities visually disappearing early, or rapidly accelerating at the end of their movement when playing at higher latencies.
- Fixed an issue where instant abilities would sometimes fail to cast until you manually cast it.
- Fixed some cases where abilities would fail to trigger due to elevation differences.
- Fixed an issue so various player and enemy abilities, projectiles, and effects will now render and move more consistently in Offline mode.
- Skills that have orbiting effects will no longer jitter or move irregularly when orbiting a moving character in Offline mode including Devouring Orb (Dark Moon), Hammer Throw (Hammer Vortex), Cinder Strike (Burning Dagger), Shurikens (Blade Shield), Static Orb (Orbital Fulmination).
- Devouring Orb (Dark Moon) will no longer appear briefly at cast location before returning to orbiting the player in Offline mode.
- Fixed an issue with some abilities’ targeting, particularly Maelstrom.