The Virelda Arena has two new areas the Cactaro General and the Cactaro King. Each new challenge comes with its own special loot, including two unique rings, the Serrated Coil, and the Zero-Fuse Loop. We have also reworked the new player experience, giving pioneers who have just joined us a much smoother introduction to Soulbound. This includes improved rewards for several early-game quests and a guaranteed ring drop for completing Virelda Outskirts while on Vesper's Challenge. Additionally, we have increased the attack speed cap from 40% to 80% to bring it in line with crit and heavy attacks. For the full details, be sure to read the patch notes below:
Highlights
The Virelda Arena is open. Take on two new arena fights in Virelda: Cactaro General at Tier 3 and Cactaro King at Tier 6. Each fight has its own enclosed arena map and a new entrance on the Virelda map.
New arena rewards. Each arena has its own reward chest, and there are two new rings to chase. The Serrated Coil (Tier 3, Cactaro General) makes Kusarigama hits apply Bleed, and Zero-Fuse Loop (Tier 6, Cactaro King) makes Bombs detonate on landing.
Attack Speed cap doubled. The cap goes from 40% to 80%, so stacking attack speed on sword builds finally pays off.
Group up for more XP. Running a dungeon in a party now earn bonus experience: 1.2x for a party of 2 and 1.5x for a party of 3 or more.
A smoother start in Virelda. New players now arrive at the Eastern Reach with Chakram, Pyrosphere, and Chain Lightning, and the Virelda Outskirts hands out a guaranteed new ring during Vesper's Challenge.
Legendary gear fixes. Legendary effects now work as described, including Dark Obsidian Chest, Celestial Yoku Gunner Pendant, Lunar Conduit Crown, Lunar Conduit Treads, and Celestial Staff.
That covers the most notable changes, but keep reading for the full update.
The Virelda Arena
Two new arena encounters have arrived in Virelda: the Cactaro General Arena at Tier 3 and the Cactaro King Arena at Tier 6.
Each arena is fought on a new enclosed map. The maps are the same size as the original Virelda arena but have their own distinct look and feel.
New entrances on the Virelda map lead into the arenas.
Each arena has its own reward chest: a Tier 3 chest in the Cactaro General Arena and a Tier 6 chest in the Cactaro King Arena.
Serrated Coil (Tier 3 ring, Cactaro General Arena): Kusarigama hits apply a Bleed.
Zero-Fuse Loop (Tier 6 ring, Cactaro King Arena): Bombs detonate the moment they land instead of waiting for their fuse.
New Player Journey in Virelda
Reworked which abilities the Virelda quests reward, so you reach the Eastern Reach with more direct, easy-to-land attacks. Vesper's Challenge now rewards Chakram, Sow Much Trouble rewards Bomb, Thirsty Work rewards Pyrosphere, Dune It Yourself rewards Chain Lightning, and The Blockade rewards Drone.
Completing the Virelda Outskirts while on Vesper's Challenge now awards a guaranteed new ring from the dungeon chest. While equipped, Chakram throws an additional chakram. The ring drops once per character.
Healing Pulse and Fortify no longer appear in the random ability selection in the Virelda Outskirts, so runs there offer more active abilities.
After completing City of Light and Shadows, Arcadia quest givers are easier to find. Fritz now starts A Little Bit of Reckon in the open, Axle now starts Guns for Hire, and Hazel's quest The Customer is Always Right is marked on the Coffee Shop door.
Quartz can now drop from Copper Outcrops and Iron Outcrops. Small Emerald can now drop from fishing spots while Finley's Attractor is equipped, and higher attractor tiers find it more often.
Server & Region Changes
Added a connect through our network accelerator option below the region dropdown on the title screen. Turning it on routes your connection through our network accelerator, which can improve connection quality for some players. Leaving it off connects you directly as before.
The option is greyed out for regions that do not offer it, and hovering over it explains why. Your choice is saved with your selected server. Changing it while connected logs you out and reconnects you through the normal server switch.
If you play through a VPN, keep the option off. Some VPN addresses cannot use the accelerated route.
Added Network Acceleration, enabling this feature can, in some cases, improve your network connection to Soulbound: Online. Try it out.
Balance & Design Changes
Combat & Progression
Raised the Attack Speed cap from 40% to 80%. Many sword relics grant attack speed, so the old cap was easy to hit and extra attack speed on gear was wasted. DES-3881
Group dungeon runs now earn bonus experience in every dungeon. A party of 2 earns 1.2x experience and a party of 3 or more earns 1.5x. Solo runs are unchanged.
Rebalanced Train Defence. More enemies now spawn, and each has significantly less health. Your 2nd ability unlocks immediately, and the other two unlocks now come at level 2 and level 5.
Unique relics are no longer offered in relic selections during the Spectra Raid.
Relics
Pyrosphere relic rarities no longer skip a tier between phases. The Phase II relics for Eruption, Pyromania, Scorched, Gravity Well and Stormcaller, and the Phase III relics for Eruption, Pyromania and Scorched, now go up one rarity at a time, matching other abilities. These relics are now offered more often, and the three Phase III relics can now actually appear in runs.
Reduced the power of the Ice Cube Frozen Bastion relic path. Its shield is weaker and lasts less time, and Frozen Bastion I now increases Ice Cube's cooldown by 25%.
Frozen Bastion III now makes the shield 30% stronger, as its description says. Previously it more than doubled the shield.
Fixed Frozen Bastion III explosions firing on every enemy hit. They now trigger once per cast.
Lifeward Phase III on Fortify now has a 50% chance to apply Healing Mark to shielded allies, down from a guaranteed application. Healing Mark now lasts 3 seconds, down from 5, and its bounce window is 4 seconds, down from 6.
Fixed the Quick Catch relic lowering Chakram's catch cooldown refund instead of raising it. Catching a returning Chakram with Quick Catch equipped now removes 55% of its remaining cooldown, up from 17.5%. Without the relic it removes 25%.
Fixed Stacking Bastion not stacking Fortify shields. A shield from a Legendary gear effect now adds to your Fortify ability shield instead of only keeping the larger of the two.
Legendary Gear
Dark Obsidian Chest: removed a leftover Greatsword effect that gave the chest two Legendary effects. Its Explosion effect now works and reads "Explosions have -20% cooldown". Previously it showed in the tooltip but did nothing, and a separate value was lengthening Explosion cooldowns such as Drone by 20%. Applies to newly dropped chests only. Chests already in your inventory keep their old stats.
Celestial Yoku Hammer: the Legendary effect now applies its intended drawback. It still increases area of effect, but hammer swings now have a longer cooldown. Applies to newly obtained hammers only.
Celestial Staff: the Legendary now has a Legendary effect whether crafted or dropped. Damage-over-time effects gain 2 extra ticks and tick twice as fast. For example, a Pyrosphere burn goes from 3 ticks a second apart to 5 ticks half a second apart. This applies to every damage-over-time ability, not only staff abilities.
Bug Fixes
Quests, Tasks & Achievements
Fixed players who had already completed Ashes in Virelda being able to re-enter Virelda (Spectra) through the dark miasma and getting trapped with no way out. The entrance now disappears once the quest is complete, and anyone stuck in the room is returned to Virelda.
Fixed the terminal in Scratching the Glitch staying on lockdown after a failed hack, which blocked retrying and progressing the quest.
Fixed Gearforging achievements not tracking progress when crafting the required gear, including Virelda Warcrest set pieces and the Encoded Cleaver.
Fixed category reward achievements showing placeholder names in achievement pop-ups. They now show proper titles such as Warpath, Well Travelled and Grand Tour.
Fixed the Reusable Carrot teleporting players to the middle of Virelda instead of the Homestead. It now takes you to the Homestead door. This applies to Carrots earned from the Farming Adept achievement from this patch onward.
Dungeons & Combat
Fixed an issue where XP was not sharing equally between party members
Fixed entering a Raid solo leaving players stuck and unable to teleport or exit.
Fixed spectators in the Spectra Raid being kicked for being AFK and missing out on loot.
Fixed players who disconnected mid-dungeon missing Abilities unlocked while they were away. If you reconnect in time, you now receive a random ability for each selection you missed, the same way Relics already work.
Fixed a Pressure Plate in dungeon chest rooms spawning on top of a player, trapping them or repeatedly pulling them back to the platform's start.
Fixed a combat room in Farpoint Storm Tier 3 failing to complete after the final wave. The exit portal now appears as expected.
Fixed the Shattered Plateau boss jumping onto surrounding terrain and becoming stuck and unhittable, which could crash the game and reset the run.
Fixed Room 7 of Eastern Reach - Fractured taking 20 to 30 seconds to start.
Fixed the Lootfly flying away when attacked and landing in spots players could not reach.
Fixed a rare issue where opening a dungeon chest could give no reward.
Items
Fixed the Celestial Yoku Gunner Pendant Legendary passive not activating. Casting Minigun now spawns a second, stationary Minigun.
Fixed Legendary Lunar Conduit Crown drops from Abyssal dungeons sometimes missing their Legendary effect.
Fixed crafted Lunar Conduit Crown and Lunar Conduit Treads missing the Legendary effect that dropped copies have. The Crown now has Cinder Ascendant (on enemy kill, +5 DoT Potency for 12s, stacks up to 5) and the Treads now have Lunar Overreach (on crit, +10% Gleamtwins projectile range for 5s, stacks up to 5). Applies to newly crafted items.
Fixed the Necrotic Warrior Plate description not listing Gleam Twins among the abilities affected by its +40% cooldown stat. The stat already applied to Gleam Twins. Only the description was missing it.
Fixed the Yoku Scale description saying it needs eight Yoku Catfish. It now says six, matching the Chemistry Lab recipe. The higher-tier Yoku fish items had the same outdated count and are also corrected.
Fixed the Angelic Halo cosmetic hiding your character's hair and turning their eyes bright yellow during attacks.
Fixed a crash when typing or pasting letters into a crafting station quantity box. Empty, zero or invalid quantities now reset to 1.
Connection & Stability
Fixed translations failing to load on some servers, which showed some game text in English instead of your selected language.
Fixed character creation sometimes failing with an error but still creating the character under a temporary guest name. Name checks are now faster, and valid names with different capitalisation are no longer wrongly rejected.
Under the Hood
The Dungeon Finder and dungeon lobbies now check which dungeons your party can enter much more efficiently, so they should respond faster, especially for full parties.
Ability stats and descriptions are now calculated and synced more efficiently, reducing server load during busy periods.
Quest requirements that check your equipped gear now use a much smaller, faster lookup, cutting background server traffic.
