0.3

It's a hefty update, so make sure to read it all. Remember: reading is power! Thanks for sticking around and being patient folks, we can't wait to show you what's next in update 0.4: Helping Hands.

## Changes and Additions

### New Features

* **A new area is ready to be explored by your heroes** in the Underhold: The Creeping Blight. This area features a new boss, and new music.
* Sunwalker Kromn's personal story can now be completed.
* Desert Mouse's personal story can now be completed.
* **Karrogh, the Fearless Wolf can now be found and rescued** to join your band of heroes. (Note that his story can’t be completed yet: only his first three story beats are included.)
* **Matriarch Wodania can now be found and rescued** to join your band of heroes.
* 8 new items have been added to the game.
* The elite enemy “Supplier Lurvid" can now be encountered when adventuring.
* The elite enemy “Shellrot" can now be encountered when adventuring.

### General

* System error windows now show 'Blightbound' in the title instead of 'Awesomenauts'.
* Fixed an issue where some Wretches didn't fade out correctly after dying.
* The amount of completion rewards on the result screen now matches what's promised on map select.
* When finishing a level and entering the Aetheri transport beam, the victory screen should now always trigger for all players.
* Fixed an issue where players were able to stop their guided movement at the start of rooms by pressing and holding the interact button.Dismembered limbs should now have blood trails following them.
* Added a subtle visual effect for when the player is under the effect of the speed buff shrine.
* Capes on characters should now no longer appear glitchy.
* Turned off compression on all files to reduce loading times on faster hard disks.
* Changed file format for voice files. The game is now about 1GB smaller on disk.

### Gameplay

*Currently the notoriety system has too much of an impact on the game, being the only way for players to reach satisfying difficulties and rewards. This both makes gaining notoriety feel essential, and losing it unnecessarily punishing. Additionally, players who were able to focus on notoriety could gain too many top-tier items faster than intended. The following changes are meant to address these issues.*

* **The difficulties selectable on the map are now randomly distributed instead of just random**. This guarantees a variety of difficulties being available even without notoriety.
* Fixed an issue where enemy scaling was weaker than intended. Enemies should now keep better pace with the heroes and differences in difficulty should be more impactful.
* **The rewards on the dungeon select screen will no longer display their quality.** Instead the quality will be randomly decided at the end of a run, where higher difficulties will give players a higher chance at better items.
* The amount of highest-tier items that can result from this is limited. Playing at higher difficulties will increase this limit.
* **Swapped around Tek'ka's and Kujuk's Ultimate skills**: Tek'ka now has Summon Spirit, and Kujuk now has Frost Skull.
* **Mini-reworked the Frost Skull skill.** The player now becomes invincible for its entire duration (default 8 seconds). However, when getting hit by enemy attacks, the duration is reduced by 1 second for each sustained hit (the duration is the health bar of the Frost Skull, in a way). When returning back to normal form, gain 1 second of invincibility.
* **Unleash spirits will now properly damage all enemies in the damage area previsualisation. The skill now also executes Wretches below 50% health** (with the exception of elite Wretches).
* Triss can no longer revive herself when a Damage over Time effect was active on an enemy, causing her passive to heal her back up from 0.
* The Phalanxes spawned are now able to hit large enemies.
* Khuliath will now no longer land on obstacles during the fight.
* Khuliath will now no longer play a heavy camera shake before landing when transitioning to a new area.
* **Khuliath's Mist Shout now instantly kills the player instead of simply damaging them, and pierces through invincibility and damage-reducing effects.**
* NPCs now no longer get stuck inside the mist wall during Khuliath's third phase.

### Items

* Updated Venom's Vault passive description.
* Nerfed the amount of damage over time Venom's Vault passive deals.
* Players can no longer go over the stat cap by abusing stat potions.
* Dokalt's Ring now shows the proper amount of health you have to drop below before the effect becomes active (40%).

### Refuge

* Increased the chance of getting better quality item options at the merchant.
* Kromn's lifegoal should now show the correct amount of light shards collected, and will reinstate any shards that have gone missing in the past.
* Controller users are now no longer able to operate the Early Access popup when it is minimized.
* The artisan buttons' highlight state in the refuge is now a little more clear.
* Updated the Amalgamation visuals in the bestiary to no longer have visually inconsistent borders from the other entries.
* Tweaked the hover-over animation for items in your inventory.
* Crafting requirements will now show when hovering over recipe items and over the forge button instead of just the item.

### Interface

* Map select will now show what map is selected by the player, including the random option.
* Tweaked the filling door icon to not fall behind it's black background and improved the contrast of the icon a bit when it hovers in the middle of a door's glow.

### Levels

* The raids that get spawned during the second part of Darkness' Embrace now spawn a little bit away from players, giving them some more time to react to the surrounding threats.
* When players fail to get back to the beginning within time at the end of Darkness' Embrace, they no longer get instantly killed. Instead, a difficult encounter spawns.
* Players can no longer jump or blink behind a door in the Inner Graves section of For Whom the Bell Tolls and get stuck there.
* After defeating the Blood Magus on Peak's end in the Hemomancer level, the game should no longer softlock by not allowing all party members to pass through to the Blightmist.
* Reduced the collision size of rocks in Khuliath the Mountain Giant level.

### Networking

* Optimised netcode to use less bandwidth, especially reducing bandwidth peaks when entering a new room.
* Improved position syncing, making enemies and other players move more smoothly and with less lag.
* The door vote progress visual should now always fill smoothly, even when not the host.
* Clients will no longer see the death animation of an enemy several times.
* Clients will no longer see a special effect repeated several times.