Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem Update #63, v0.5.0.3 Patch Notes

A new Kickstarter update for SolarFall Games' action-RPG Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem informs us that the 0.5.0.3 Update for the game is now live and offers an overview of some of the new features along with a few screenshots. And over on the game's official website, you can find the complete patch notes. Here's an excerpt from the Kickstarter update:

The team has been busy developing and implementing many cool gameplay features during the last few weeks and some of those are now making their way into the game, trough update 0.5.0.3!

First, the arena mode has been added. You can test your skill in the arena in Dhur at any time, but we recommend starting with a level 15 character. Once in the arena lobby, you can choose from one of two arena modes: classic, which is a mix of specific challenges with various rules and completion goals, or infinite arenas, which consists of cycles of ten randomly generated waves of monsters.

The second major feature is player Defense and monster Protection. We’ve talk about those in a previous post, the only change being the name of the mechanic for monsters.

There are many other changes under the hood, including the player navmesh, which allows player characters to automatically navigate between monsters in a fluid manner. We also added a new music track that plays in Amarth and Dhur. Don’t forget to turn the music volume up!

We’re also introducing lens flares to the game. This features brings visual quality overall without affecting the performance. This is a first iteration of the feature, and it will be improved over time.

We are pretty sure many of you will like it, but but for those who don’t, it can be disabled in the game settings.

You can now cancel points spent in the PST by re-clicking the nodes as long as you have not confirmed the attribution yet and it doesn’t create separate sub-trees. It addition to this, a few tweaks have been brought to the PST for a smoother experience and in prevision of future rings.

Loot text is now smoothly animated on-screen, for a more satisfying monster-splaying experience.

And some patch highlights:

GENERAL:
  • Arena system has been added to the game.
  • Local navmesh has been, allowing for smooth player navigation between monsters.
  • Fixed several random crashes.
  • Game now save before exiting when hitting alt + F4
  • The player does not abusively lean anymore when rotating
VISUALS:
  • Introducing lens flares to the game.
  • Fixed a bug causing Infiltration to permanently cloak your weapons until unequipped.
  • Fixed Frost Giant warcry particle not appearing anymore.
  • Brutal Strike look.
  • Fixed the fog bleeding in house caves.
  • Fixed a bug causing some skill-bound weapon trails to remain on screen indefinitely.
  • Current stacks number is now displayed on DOT icons, and all DOT icons have been reworked to better fit the new passive skills icons.
  • New portal visuals
  • New magic effect globe
UI:
  • Umbra, Rage and Health values can now be permanently displayed in the gameplay options. Values are now displayed on top of each gauge.
  • In game time of day is now displayed in the top right of the screen
  • Active effect tooltip is not removed anymore when the effect expires, but lasts until you move your mouse.
  • Defense Regeneration value is now shown in your character sheet.
QUESTS:
  • The “Advanced tutorial : Weapons types” quest is now unlocked directly at the end of the “Getting Out” quest.
ENVIRONMENT:
  • Fixed a bug that could prevent the ice traps in Hailstone Bay from hitting you.
  • Increased the number of chests in the open-world and added new Unique chests locations.
  • No more enemies popping when teleporting to Ravengard Fortress
  • Fixed a bugging causing Amarth’s blacksmith to disappear.
  • Optimization on the PST ring animation.
  • Dhur is now bigger, with the Arena entrance at the north of the city.
  • Two new Bounty architecture : A fully Corrupted Dungeon and an overgrowth version of the Oblivion Temple.
  • Improved the Dungeon architecture “Oblivion Temple”.
CHARACTERS:
  • Skeleton warriors have new walks animations.
  • The Corrupted Juggernaut is now bigger.
  • The giant skeleton boss, Halaku, has his death animation.
  • The giant skeleton boss has a blow away animation.
LOCALIZATION:
  • Added Chinese localization (Thank you very much wynick27)
  • Hungarian, Spanish, German localization update
  • Once again, thanks to our awesome community to update localization!
GAMEPLAY:
  • The new Defense mechanic is now active for the player.
  • Globally improved the responsiveness of the player’s movement
  • Fixed a bug causing the Dual Wield Damage penalty to be applied permanently after some time.
  • Practice targets (ex: strawmen in the Amarth arena) are now targetable like regular enemies.
  • Fixed a bug causing props and static entities (ex: Corrupted Heart) targeting to fail in Melee depending on the weapons used.
  • Zombies in the starting area have their intended health amount again.
  • Increased the animation speed of the Greatsword weapon style by 33%.
  • Decreased the animation speed of the two-handed dual wield weapon style by 15%.
  • Fixed the female staff attack animation being slower than intended.
  • Fixed a bug causing Rage Generation on received hits to be applied twice.
  • Changes have been brought to Damage computation (Resistances, Frozen shatter, etc.), making things clear, simpler and more predictable.
  • Fixed a Health computation bug, causing enemies to have incomplete health bars from time to time.
  • Fixed an explosion radius calculation bug affecting several skills.
  • The DOT Damage and effects computation has been totally reworked, and will lead to a better balancing in the future.
  • Inflicting Frailty stacks to enemies slowly depletes all their Protections, at a rate that depends on your Frailty Efficiency.
  • Frailty now cuts off your Defense regeneration and your enemies Protections regeneration.
  • Weakness now reduces the efficiency of Defense Shattering / Protections Shattering (depending on the Weakness Efficiency).
  • Rage-on-hits affixes may now get a chance to apply instead of being a 100% sure thing.
  • Decreased the spell damage bonus given by mage staves.
  • Teleport will not appear as a champion affix anymore until it is improved.