Welcome to the Chapter 1: The Spellstorm release notes! With this release, the Chapter system kicks off in earnest and we've got a whole lot of content coming in with it.

Chapter System

• With Chapter 1, we're introducing 72 new story and honor quests and 50 levels of rewards, along with the story that will delve into the origins of the spellstorm.
• You'll meet NPCs outside of the match who will help you uncover the mysteries and direct you on your quests.
• Over the course of the Chapter, the world itself will update with a few new gameplay elements as the story unfolds…
• The story quests, which will form the core of the story, will be completely free for everyone, while the honor quests will require a Chapter Pass.
• There are three ways to get the Chapter Pass:
  • For 1000 gold, you can unlock a Chapter Pass with a 25% bonus to your Chapter reputation. It's important to us that you’ll never be forced to pay real money to experience the complete story so we'll try to always offer an option you can purchase with gold.
  • There's also the Spellslinger bundle, which includes a Chapter Pass with a 50% bonus, a Bag of Gold, and the Steely-Eyed Spellslinger outfit.
  • Finally there's the Warlock bundle, which includes a Chapter Pass with a 100% bonus, a Mountain of Gold, and the Steely-Eyed Spellslinger and Sinister Warlock outfits.

Daily Quests

• We wanted to make daily quests more meaningful as well as provide players with a steady source of income so we've made one pretty large change to them…
• Daily quests have been tiered out in terms of rarity and now award 5/10/20 gold each.
• A number of the daily quests have been added, changed, and removed as well.

Steam Release

• Spellbreak is now available on Steam and, of course, Steam works with cross-play and cross-progression.
• Players can view their Steam friends and join their parties from the friends screen.

UI

• Queue timer now counts up instead of down.
• Added main menu notification for the following actions into the friends menu:
  • Party invite
  • New friend via an accepted request
  • Friend requests
• Quests are now visible in-game in the tab menu.
• Players can now disable controller vibration entirely in the settings menu.
• Match experience screen now shows up when a player leaves a match early after being exiled.

World

• Deadmoss has been completely redesigned, including a new Castle Bogmore, Deadmoss Canals, Slums, Dreadcurtain, and more.
• Sawtooth Mountain has been reworked to be easier to traverse.
  • We heard that there were some fights on the mountain at the end of a match that were not great so we've made this much easier to get around.
• Added POIs for Fernfall Garrison, Cloister, and Wayfarer’s Crossing
• Added different sound effects depending on what sort of surface a player is traversing.

Clash

• Clash matches now end with a mercy ruling if one team is more than 20 points up on the other.
  • Being on the losing side in a runaway game isn't great, so this should end those games more quickly.
• The score needed to win a match now updates based on how many people remain in game.
  • If people are dropping, the score will lower accordingly.
• Vital stone now correctly revives you one time every time you respawn.
  • robust.
• Fixed some instances where Armor Shards could appear on the ground in Clash.
• Amulets should always give mana on respawn in Clash.
• Fixed a bug causing players to score an assist every time their opponents get Exiled, even if the player only damaged them once in the entire match.
• The scoreboard at end of the match is no longer erroneously auto-skipped after a few seconds.
• Fixed a bug preventing players from exiting the end of match screen with a controller.

Balance and Gameplay

Misc. Gameplay

• Unfortunately, we found a bug in Updraft after we had submitted the build, so it's currently giving a reduced boost from where it was in 1.2. It'll be fixed in a future release. Sorry!
• The Recovery talent now recovers 35% of damage taken (down from 50%).
  • Recovery's been the dominant pick for a while now and we wanted to scale it back. Hopefully this makes room for other talents / builds.
• The Shadowstep rune once again clamps momentum.
  • This was an unintended change in 1.2 and has led to certain builds / classes becoming far too strong. We'll be keeping an eye on those classes as well, but we didn't want to change them when they've historically not actually been a problem.
• Upgrading to a higher tier rarity of rune now correctly instantly lowers the cooldown of the new rune.
• Reduced lateral movement speed while dropping from portals by 33%.
  • Prior to this change, it was possible to cover a lot of ground on the initial drop. This lead to portal choice being less important and let people spread out without much regard for their choice. By slowing the movement, we want to make the choice of drop more important.

Frostborn and Frost Gauntlet

• The Frost Gauntlet sorcery, Flash Freeze, has had its cooldown reduced to 15s (from 20s).
  • A 20s cooldown on a hard to use and self-centered sorcery left this as one of the weaker sorceries. Reducing its cooldown by 25% will let players make use of it more often both offensively and defensively.
• The "walls" of Flash Freeze are now significantly higher.
  • Speaking of defensive, the Flash Freeze barrier would often let people "just jump" and shoot in from above.
• The Invulnerability provided by the Tundra skill is now visible on the character.
  • While it's short-lived, adding a visual component to Tundra's effect gives players on both sides of an encounter a better feel for how long it lasts.
• Flash Freeze has had its visuals reworked.
• The Icicle skills now also removes the mana cost for a fully charged Ice Lance.
  • We wanted to better reward players for committing to the long-held shot.

Lightning Gauntlet

• We've heard a lot of feedback around Lightning being too strong and impossible to deal with and while some of the feedback centers around the Conduit skills, only changing them wouldn't do much to adjust those who use it as an offhand, so we've opted to just tone its damage down by ~15-20% across the board.
• Adjusted Lightning Spell Damage downwards:
  • Common: 5-7 (was 6-8)
  • Uncommon: 6-8 (was 6-10)
  • Rare: 6-9 (was 7-11)
  • Epic: 7-9 (was 8-11)
  • Legendary: 7-10 (was 9-12)

Stone Gauntlet

• Stone's Shockwave spell remains one of the most damaging spells in the game and while "just jump" is a popular meme/counter, there are plenty of situations where that ends up not working out so well and you end up being punished heavily without much recourse, so we're making a few changes to how Shockwave works at its edges.
• Slightly reduced maximum height above ground at which Shockwave does damage.
  • It's often hard to tell if you've been hit fairly or if there was latency or other factors in play, but in lowering the height at which it can damage you, it should now be easier to perform the aforementioned jump without getting your feet chunked.
• Shockwave now decreases its damage at range. The reduction starts at 25m and ramps down to 50% damage reduction at max distance (40m).
  • Shockwave was never meant to be a "poke" tool but it's often used as one. While we're going to leave that ability in place, by reducing the damage at longer ranges, we're making it more possible to outrange a stone user and be rewarded.
• Fixed issue where Shockwave traveling up or down slopes would sometimes hit players too high above the ground. This is primarily making visuals line up with reality so you're not hit while clearly above it.

Pyromancer

• Pyro has one very strong thing going for it that makes it very prevalent at all levels of play and one thing that actively works against it, especially for more skilled players, and occasionally would chunk someone hard without much rhyme or reason. We'll be addressing both of them.
• Increased damage falloff of Combust AOE.
  • Combust often felt like you could miss your shots completely and still be heavily rewarded. We've made the falloff much more dramatic so while it's the same size, you'll need to miss by narrow margins to get the same damage.
• Conflagration now spits out 6 smaller fireballs instead of 4.
• Smaller Conflagration fireballs now Ignite players instead of damaging them directly.
• Smaller Conflagration fireballs no longer block other projectiles.
• Conflag often felt like a crapshoot when it went off. The smaller fireballs often wouldn't hit anything and you'd even sometimes end up blocking your own subsequent shots, especially if you were trying to combo something. By increasing the amount of splinters, it's now more likely that you hit other players and by changing them into Ignites, it avoids the "shotgun" effect where all of them could hit someone at once depending on how they were moving.

Tempest and Wind Gauntlet

• Tempest and the elemental interactions around wind have classically struggled to keep up with the other classes and interactions and we wanted to juice them up a bit.
• Ignited or Toxified tornadoes apply an additional 4 damage per second to targets inside or near their base.
• Electrified tornadoes now shock players near their base.
• The Squall skill now activates immediately once a player is in the air.
  • This returns to the very original version of this skill from wayyy back in the pre-alpha so we'll be keeping an eye on it but it feels like it works in the current meta.

Misc

• A number of emotes have had sound and visual effects added. This is going to be an on-going process and we’ll be adding more in future releases.

Playstation

• Fixed an issue causing Playstation players not to receive their purchases until the game is restarted.

Switch

• Fixed a bug where players could turn on airplane mode while loading into the main menu to break navigation.
• Fixed a bug preventing sound effects from playing while opening a chest or Mana Vault.
• Fixed a bug that caused music to stop during the match start countdown.

Xbox

• It's now easier to see friends/teammates Xbox profiles in various UIs.

All Platform Bug Fixes

• Individually purchasing all items in a bundle now correctly disables the purchase button.
• Fixed a bug where spectating another team could cause the wrong UI to appear while spectating.
• Fixed a bug causing players to hear but does not see players who joined them after attempting to join a full party.
• Fixed a bug causing health numbers to not appear when the Armor bar is empty.
• Players will no longer have to relog if content rolls over while they're logged in.
• Fixed a bug preventing input on talent selection the first time it's opened with a controller and again after each match.
• Activating Chronomaster rune no longer causes the mana bar to display incorrectly.
• Pressing "yes" and back at the same time while making an account no longer makes the game unresponsive.
• Losing internet connection while starting the game no longer causes an infinite loading screen.
• Fixed a bug that could cause mage rank icons to appear black in Mastery’s rewards screen until the player changes anything in the collections menu.
• Cloudbursts no longer disappear from previews in the collections menu.
• Players should once again receive XP at the end of a match if they're spectating someone who exiles themselves.
• Vital Stone talent VFX is no longer misaligned with the character model while observed by other players.
• Fixed some hitches while picking up items.
• Sound effects should no longer continue to play on the exiled screen.
• Fixed a bug where the back button was not functional at first try when entering the Talent Selection screen right after launching the title
• Fixed a bug where double-clicking the stop button on the chapters screen to stop the VO would cause audio to play twice.
• Fixed a bug causing armor damage vfx to look distorted when viewed by other players.
• Consuming an armor shard is now canceled if the player is filling armor caused by using a stone gauntlet with the Ambidextrous talent and the stone gauntlet is dropped.
  • Yeah, exactly.
• And of course, a bunch of rare crashes on all platforms.

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