New Story Elements
In this update, we have added some new narrative content over the course of Rasmine's chapter, which expands the storyline of supporting characters. It is optional, and therefore modest compared to the main plot - but will ultimately affect the Reckoning in a small way, once the final game is released. Your feedback helped motivate this particular work. We knew we wanted to fill out Rasmine's chapter with more story, but the form it took was still somewhat open. Several of you had either asked to learn more about the rest of the Svangård family tree, or requested reasons to poke around Våkenatt, the mysterious estate-in-exile of the Svangård family. Thank you all again for sharing those thoughts with us - and please keep them coming! If you want to experience it in a pristine state, we recommend starting a new Rasmine chapter. Previous savegames in this chapter may not interact with the new content elegantly, "quest" content in particular is not always backwards-compatible. After a Ritual or two, you should see the new dialogue opportunities appear somewhere in the house. To be clear, this will NOT break existing progress, but there may be inconsistencies, like characters not being in the right place for the dialogue they are delivering, depending on the exact state of your save.
Visual Updates
We have also done some polishing to the visuals in this update. In particular we have done a new lighting and atmosphere pass on the manor for the mid-chapter rituals against One-Eye to better reflect the strange atmosphere of those interludes. In addition we did a pass through many of the character locations in the game and did special lighting for each in order to improve clarity/visibility (it is dark game by design, but you should never struggle to find game relevant details) and to improve the look and mood of the locations. Along with numerous small fixes, we improved the transitions between gameplay and conversations to give the game a little more polish.
Gameplay/Balance
Two notable changes here: By player request, we changed the Withering(3) option in the forge to WIthering(Last) to make sure that you can always reach the 4th or 5th cards in a pact for removal. The previous implementation made it too hard to remove inheritance from a 4th position. We changed Doomed Overguard to not have tunnel by default. In watching people play and in our own testing, we found it made the card far too niche and hard to use in general play, especially since it is in Rasmine's starting deck. We are looking at Rasmine's starting deck in general, and may alter it further in the next update.
Full List
For the completionist, here is the full list of notable fixes and changes!
New optional storyline quest in Rasmine's chapter.
Tuned sound of bell in Vollem witching hour.
Updates to save/load system to allow adding new content to existing saves (previously new save/load content would be pruned by the system on load). Many additional tweaks and fixes to make sure this worked as intended (PLEASE LET US KNOW IF YOU SEE ANYTHING FAIL HERE).
Cinematic actors no longer prune on load.
Smoother transitions between gameplay and conversations (many downstream fixes to existing transitions to support this).
New lighting for numerous character positions: Nicka and Vollem pre wedding, Vollem at the Grotto stairs, Nicka in the grotto, Nicka at the railing, Nicka by the washbasin, Vollem in the fainting room, others.
Fixed rare hang if you hit continue too fast during the ritual complete screen.
Made sure Vollem and Nicka were in the right place during Rasmine's witching hour.
Withering(3) is now Withering(Last), removes the last card from a pact.
Fixed floating rock in grotto.
Fixed pop in camera animation after the final ritual in a chapter.
The damage preview nails on Grim Tribute are now visible all the time instead of immediately preceding the attack to provide more clarity on how much damage it will do and when it updates.
Feast card text updated to specify that it heals 1 wound.
New fog, postprocess and lighting for the manor before the mid chapter rituals with One-Eye.
Updated Malthe position during mid-chapter ritual with one eye to better reflect mental state of his dialogue.
Updated tutorial text to better set expectations around difficulty of a full inheritance cleanse, clarify that it is a modifier on success, not REQUIRED for success.
Updated tutorial text around expunge to better reflect the relative importance of clearing inheritance against other goals.
Added One-Eye figurine to dollhouse.
Added Nils figurine to dollhouse after completing the Malthe questline.
Tweaked shadow scare to have better timing en route to the study.
Forced streaming on ritual contract to avoid blurry texture in some cases.
Fix for rare hang related to incredible combo of Redirecting Mask, Siren, and Soul of Ras.
There are more new story and gameplay improvements to come - The Killing Stone is already a much better game for your feedback and suggestions. Please keep it coming, and thank you all! -Question
