Hi everyone!

We’re happy to announce that the Winter Update is now live for PC and PS4 players – Xbox One players will have to wait a few more days as the version is validated by Microsoft testing teams. As mentioned previously, we were hoping to release it earlier, but with the Xbox One version release and the debugging efforts, it took more time than expected. Winter maps and equipment have been ready for a while, but we thought that it would be a bad idea to release a content update without addressing the major gameplay concerns from the community, so we decided to wait until the fixes were done before releasing any new content.

Update Content

The 1.29 Winter Update features :

• Four new Winter equipment sets available in the Essence Shop: Guide Lieutenant, Mountain Warrior, Uring Idolator, and Uring Heathen.
• Two “snow” versions of maps (Birdhouse, and Shipyard)
• Gameplay balancing and bugfixing (see below for more information)
• Other bugfixes and optimizations (too numerous to list precisely!)

Gameplay balancing

We have been reading a lot of complaints on manual dodging since the Downfall update. Pretty much everybody has different opinions as to which combat style is the best, which attacks should be nerfed to the ground and which ones are totally useless, but one thing everyone seems to agree on was that manual dodging had become overpowered since Downfall, that it was a sort of free “get out of jail” card that didn’t require much skill, and made combat less interesting overall.

We therefore focused on improving this for the Winter Update update, in two ways: by fixing a bug we identified which made the issue worse, and by changing some gameplay parameters around manual dodging:

• Fixed an issue on the dodge iframe duration (could be 4 instead of 2 in some cases)
• Reduced the iframes on dodge side from 2 to 1 (still no iframes on dodge forward/backward)
• Reduced dodge distance, and decreased walking speed in combat. Both of these changes make it harder to escape attacks, since the attack movement speed was not changed.

Two other important gameplay issues have also been fixed:

• Fixed an issue where the avoid side (both Windfall special ability and attack property) was not working in specific cases: this issue was also one of the reasons manual dodge was perceived as overpowered.
• Fixed an issue where inputs were delayed (3 frames) after any stun, resulting in wrong advantage frames: advantage frames will now be much more consistent, and in line with their intended design parameters. This will impact attacks, but also Earthquake power, which had an unintended frame advantage up until now.

These may seem like subtle fixes, but they actually have a significant impact on the game’s balancing, especially for experienced high-level players. We feel that the balancing of the game will be in a pretty good place with this update, so we hope lots of you will try it out, and let us know what you think!

All the best,
Sloclap Team