Steam Summer Sale has begun, and during that time The Hopebringer will be available for 50% off. As we move into that, we wanted to take a look back at our most recent progress in week 5 of Early Access. [b]Dungeons and Scenarios[/b] [list][*]Added a compass with quest marker support. This will mark some quest waypoints on your compass to make them easier to locate. Not all waypoints will support markers, some things are best hidden. It can be enabled or disabled on a case by case basis. It also supports variable range. Meaning that some markers will appear when you are within a certain distance, and be invisible when you are beyond that distance. [*]Introduced new ambushes. These are uncommon, but will result in some particles and sound, followed immediately by an ambush of NPCs appropriate to the current scenario settings. [*]Updated many scenarios to display quest markers at various parts of the mission. [/list] [b]Items and Loot[/b] [list][*]Treasure chests will now drop a higher ratio of items, where previously they were primarily dropping gold. The gold has not been reduced, but items have been made more common. [*]Gold dropped when you die will no longer expire like other gold. It will remain there until it is looted or you exit the scenario. [*]Fixed a bug with some pieces of equipment acting as occluders, with odd results in some cases. [/list] [b]NPCs[/b] [list][*]Barbarian Witch-Doctors bosses have new spells at their disposal. [*]Added a thin plane underneath the terrain in each scenario. This is not visible, and shouldn't affect gameplay at all, but is an effort to resolve an issue where in some rare cases, NPCs would spawn partially underneath terrain. [*]NPC healers will now heal allies a bit earlier than was previously the case. [*]Fixed an issue with the Cleanse spell and NPCs. Sometimes they would get stuck trying to move into range when they intended to cleanse a specific target. [*]Fixed an issue with Fiend aggro. [/list] [b]Pets and Companions[/b] [list][*]All companions, as well as healer or werewolf pets, will now gain a short regeneration buff when the owning character goes into resting mode (15 seconds after exiting combat). [*]Giving a health potion to a companion or pet will now heal them. [*]Cleric companions can now Smite. This was later improved upon, in a later patch. [*]Fixed a bug that caused cleric companions AI to malfunction and stop attacking for stretches. [*]Remedied a pet pathing issue. [*]Fixed an issue with the Cleanse spell and companions, which could sometimes allow the companion to stop attacking or moving until the encounter ended. [/list] [b]Skills[/b] [list][*]Introduced a new Wizard (Mage) spell: Lightning. This spell can be trained at level 7, and will launch streams of lightning in front of the character. It begins at 3 streams of lightning, and each additional skill rank adds an additional stream. [*]Implemented a new Berserker (Warrior) skill: Energy Burst. It requires that you have trained the Energetic skill, and are at least level 10 to train. This ablity increases your movement and attack speed for a short period of time. Additional skill ranks increase those stats. Every five ranks of Energetic will add a second to the duration. [*]Introduced a new Conjurer (Mage) spell: Heal Pet. This is an area of effect healing spell that will only heal summoned pets owned by the caster. It will not heal scenario based companions, only pets. You gain this spell at level 3. Additional ranks will increase the amount of damage healed and the radius healed inside of. [*]Defensive Stance (Guardian/Warrior) has had its buff and debuff ratios tweaked to give them a higher initial bonus, and a larger bonus per skill rank. The ratio also improves in efficiency with each rank. At full skill it will give a +140% defense bonus, at the cost of a -34% damage penalty. [*]Berserk(Berserker/Warrior) has had its buff and debuff ratios tweaked to give them a higher initial bonus, and a larger bonus per skill rank. The ratio also improves in efficiency with each rank. At full skill it will give a +140% damage bonus, at the cost of a -34% defense penalty. [*]Improved the Frost Winds aura (Wizard/Mage) so that it now does more initially, and per level. It now maxes out at a -53% penalty to movement speed and attack speed to nearby targets. [*]Frost Blast (Wizard/Mage) has had it's movement speed and attack speed debuff doubled per level, with an additional -3% as a starting bonus. [*]Healing Wave now properly adjusts its radius based on skill level, as was originally intended. [*]Tweaked player stats, to reduce the overall amount of power that players have at higher levels. [*]Mages can now kill worms with PBAoE spells. [/list] [b]User Interface[/b] [list][*]Added a compass with quest marker support. [*]Corrected some font related issues which opened the door to some additional localizations. [/list] [b]Miscellaneous[/b] [list][*]The game now supports Simplified Chinese and Japanese localizations. As with other localizations, translations should be considered in a beta phase, and you may run into some un-localized strings. [*]If you died and dropped any gold, a corpse marker will now be placed on your corpse. This will appear on the compass as a green colored marker to make it easy to find. When you reach your corpse, the marker will automatically remove itself. [*]Fixed a rubber banding issue with female unarmed rolling. [/list]