Holy Nova is a new common spell weapon. It has a moderately low cooldown and hits the whole screen from level 1, requiring no area size upgrades at all. It is very flexible and can be built as a crit-based screen clear, a burn or shock weapon, or a utility knockback.

The complete skill tree has been overhauled. Major nodes are now sprinkled throughout the tree and give greater bonuses than the minor ones.

• Entire tree has been reorganized and is now bigger than ever before.
• Overleveling is now a intentional part of the trees design. It is unlocked by getting the “Growth & Rebirth” node at the end of the tree.
• Late game cost scaling is now tiered instead of scaling linearly. The tiers are as follows: 250 essence after 30 upgrades, 400 essence after 50 upgrades, 750 essence after 70 upgrades, 1000 essence after 100 upgrades.
• If someone really manages to amass 200 upgrades it starts scaling again, with each upgrade costing 10% more than the previous one (multiplicative). This probably only becomes relevant once Nightmare difficulty is introduced. (For reference, it takes about 40 upgrades to reach the end of the skill tree.)
• Minor and Major %Health nodes have been added.
• Minor and Major %Armor nodes have been added.
• Major Attack Speed nodes have been added. Minor Attack Speed nodes have been removed.
• Minor and Major Burn and Shock nodes have been added.
• Minor and Major +Magic Find nodes have been added.
• Minor and Major Spell Duration, Cooldown and Damage nodes have been added.
• Many minor nodes got major counterparts.
• Weapon Specialization nodes have been replaced with simpler Major Weapon nodes.
• All ranged and melee weapons can now gain crit chance through the skill tree.

There is now the option to use a bigger HUD and a bigger font for the descriptions, which should help when playing on small or far away screens. Both options can be found in the Options menu and can be changed even during a run.

Gives improved stats to all status effects. More shock duration. Stronger burns. Quicker frost build up. Heavier bleeds.

Replaces the Ouroboros Ring in the item progression, requiring either Level 5 Ember Flask or Level 8 Holy Nova to find.

“Accelerate” upgrade but in Trinket Form, applies to all Spell archetype weapons.

Replaces the Eldritch Mass in the item progression, requiring either Level 5 Rosary or Level 8 Lightning Rain to find.

Basically, due to a bug Ouroborous Ring was useless in the last patch, not giving the Trinket/Weapon slots/levels it was supposed to. That bug is now fixed.

But at the same time the design of it was quite outdated and underpowered even with the bug fixed. To bring it up to speed with the other options in the game it now gives twice as much XP bonus and now starts with Weapon Max Level +1.

All trinkets can now also be unlocked by upgrading a weapon to level 8. The reasoning behind this is that upgrading a weapon to level 8 should always unlock something new to reward the player for trying out a new playstyle. They can still be unlocked by upgrading trinkets as before, these new unlock paths are in addition to the old ones. This just gives more options how to progress through the game.

One change however, Trinkets now need level 5 to unlock the next one, to encourage people to get that level 5 trinket power spike.

• Base chance for all rarity levels has been decreased to about 75% of the old version. This is because you now can upgrade your Magic Find attribute in the skill tree.
• The Level 5/10 upgrades of Trinkets now ignore the rarity roll, making their “Rare” rarity purely cosmetic.
• Items can now spawn the moment you fulfill it’s requirements, rather than in the next run only. Could be interesting for routing speed runs…
• Tweaked the way burn damage works a bit, it now has a “Fade In” period during which it does less damage. This isn’t necessarily a nerf since it increases the chance the burn effect propagates.
• “Projectile” tag has been renamed to “Ranged”.
• “Heal Factor” has been renamed to “Heal Effectiveness”

• Lightning Rain base Cooldown increased from 10s to 12s.
• Lightning Rain base Duration increased from 2s to 3s.
• Lightning Rain “-Cooldown” upgrade decreased from +0.04 Casts/second to +0.03 Casts/second.
• Lightning Rain “+Duration” upgrade now gives +0.3s Shock duration instead of +0.2s.
• Lightning Rain “+Damage” upgrade has been renamed to “Intensity” and gives “+0.1s Shock” in addition to it’s damage increase.
• Lightning Rain “+Damage”, “+Hit-Rate”, and “Duration” upgrades are now Common instead of Rare.
• Lightning Rain “Accelerate” upgrade has been removed. (Get the Arcane Pendulum instead.)
• Returning Blade now has 5% Crit Chance and 300% Crit Multiplier.
• Returning Blade upgrade now also gives a additional 2% Crit Chance.
• Dragon Soul no longer has the “Projectile”/”Ranged” tag. Instead it scales with Spell nodes.

Next month will be a bit quieter than usual because all the focus will be on designing the second stage: The Plains of Hell. I originally planned to work on this big update for 4 weeks, but it can take anywhere between 4 and 8 weeks.

Week 01: Early Access Launch
Week 02: Minor Update
Week 03: Status Effects
Week 04: Minor Update
Week 06: Divine Arts Soon: Plains of Hell
???: Nightmare Difficulty
???: Post-Game Content
???: Modding Support
???: v1.0 – End of Early Access
???: Lucifer Update