Stoic, the developer behind the Banner Saga franchise, released its latest project, Towerborne, into Steam Early Access last month. While a couple of hotfixes have landed since then, the studio today pushed out its first major update to the fantasy beat "em up experience. Dubbed Duskveil, it touts a major class revision, progression changes, and even Halloween-themed customizations.
On the progression front, the studio saw that the difficulty spike between Danger Levels 3 and 4 was too large and adjusted its sharpness using better Uncommon and Rare item upgrades. Based on feedback, leveling up has been slowed down somewhat, too, letting players spend more time gathering gear without being overpowered.
Brand-new replayable discovery missions have landed on Grasslands, Fungi Forest, Mountains, and Ruins regions too, giving players more things to do until Stoic whips up some new type of content to dive into. Aspect storage has been increased from 40 to 50 slots in this update as well.
While the studio has fixed issues on all of the classes Towerborne offers, Sentinel has received almost a complete overhaul with the Duskveil update:
- Block: It is now possible to cancel attacks into block. This follows the same rules as canceling into an Evade.
- Shield Strike: It is now possible to double-tap Block to perform a Shield Strike. Shield Strike can Block Break blocking enemies, stagger fodder enemies, and has a small window to Parry incoming attacks. Shield Strike provides the player with another way to perform the Shield Bash combo. Press Heavy Attack after the Shield Strike and see how it goes!
- Parry: Increased Parry window to better account for online latency and decreased Parry cooldown window. This will make it easier to create some “Let’s go Justin!” moments when Parrying multi-hit attacks.
- Valor: Increased Valor reward when blocking and parrying attacks, and increased the number of hits available while in Valor mode.
The complete patch notes go over exploration, enemy changes, and a massive amount of bug fixes. Find the full list of changes here. Following the current Steam Early Access version, Towerborne is slated to hit Xbox Game Preview on Xbox and Windows in early 2025, which is also when Game Pass subscribers will be able to jump in.