Lords of the Fallen patches are coming in thick and fast. The latest brings Hexworks’ Soulslike up to version 1.1.224 and makes big changes to the game.
The biggest change here is to New Game Plus. In a post on Steam, Hexworks explained the change: “From today's patch onward, now when you complete your initial playthrough, you will be presented with a new option before embarking on your next runthrough; you can either progress directly to the next consecutive New Game (if you’ve just completed NG+1, you would move onto NG+2), or you can replay the current NG at the same difficulty, albeit retaining your character, items and progression, but resetting the entire world, including NPCs and questlines. This will allow trophy hunters and completionists to seek out any outstanding tasks without having to contend with increased difficulty, should they so choose.”
Another patch is planned for Thursday, October 26 which will make further updates to t New Game Plus mode. Again, Hexworks explained: “Instead of removing all vestiges (as it does currently), NG+1 will only see a few disappear while keeping the key locations intact. In NG+2, a few more will disappear, and then in NG+3 all but the main HUB (Skyrest Bridge) and Adyr's Shrine vestige will disappear. This way, our initial vision remains intact but is more of a gradual adaptation, awaiting those who seek increasing levels of challenge.”
Hexworks announced it has started designing the "NG+ modifier system", which lets players fully customise their NG+ experience, whether that’s retaining all vestiges, keeping just a few, or removing them completely. It will also include other fun modifiers like a "hardcore" mode (one death = permadeath), item randomisers, enemy randomisers, etc. “The feature set is yet to be fully defined, but our current intention is to release the modifier system before the end of the year,” Hexworks said.
Elsewhere, the latest patch tackles enemy density. Hexworks has improved the ‘leashing system’ by further limiting how far enemies will pursue players from their spawn point. “This helps prevent large crowds of enemies from relentlessly pursuing the player when rushing through a level,” Hexworks said.
Again, further improvements are coming on this in Thursday’s patch, including reducing the number of enemies present in areas where players most struggle. “These enemies will be removed in your initial playthrough, but will remain in NG+, in keeping with the more challenging experience players are seeking,” Hexworks said.
“Additionally, we are going to tweak some crowd behaviours so enemies will not swarm players as often; multiple enemies will no longer land hits at the same time,while enemies will also be a little less aggressive when swarming the player in greater numbers.”
We also have an update on crossplay, which is due to launch on consoles today, October 23, then on all platforms on Thursday.
Lords of the Fallen players have complained about the game’s performance since launch, and Hexworks has further improved matters with this patch. “Our constant efforts for improved GPU stability are paying off, and we see that right now, the numbers have been reduced drastically from launch, to less than one third of what they were day one, yet still affecting four percent of our players each hour,” Hexworks said.
“We are diligently addressing the remaining 0.28% of crashes stemming from game code, while also collaborating closely with Nvidia, AMD, and Epic to resolve any outstanding issues reported by players through Sentry.” More “key improvements” are expected to roll out from now this Thursday, Hexworks added.
And a final word on lost progression: Hexworks said it is “diligently” working on a solution for affected players. “We're setting up a team you can send your corrupted saves/downgraded characters to, which will respond by providing your saves with the required vigor to restore characters up to the level they were before the glitch,” Hexworks explained.
NG+
Enemy Density
Visuals
In IGN’s Lords of the Fallen review, we said: "Lords of the Fallen is a great soulslike, and its killer new idea of swapping between two versions of the world to solve puzzles and slay enemies is an excellent twist to set it apart from the pack. That concept is unfortunately hamstrung by numerous, highly annoying technical issues and weak boss fights, but awesome explorable areas and fantastic buildcrafting more than make up for those shortcomings."
Check out IGN’s Lords of the Fallen guide for help with the game.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
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The biggest change here is to New Game Plus. In a post on Steam, Hexworks explained the change: “From today's patch onward, now when you complete your initial playthrough, you will be presented with a new option before embarking on your next runthrough; you can either progress directly to the next consecutive New Game (if you’ve just completed NG+1, you would move onto NG+2), or you can replay the current NG at the same difficulty, albeit retaining your character, items and progression, but resetting the entire world, including NPCs and questlines. This will allow trophy hunters and completionists to seek out any outstanding tasks without having to contend with increased difficulty, should they so choose.”
Another patch is planned for Thursday, October 26 which will make further updates to t New Game Plus mode. Again, Hexworks explained: “Instead of removing all vestiges (as it does currently), NG+1 will only see a few disappear while keeping the key locations intact. In NG+2, a few more will disappear, and then in NG+3 all but the main HUB (Skyrest Bridge) and Adyr's Shrine vestige will disappear. This way, our initial vision remains intact but is more of a gradual adaptation, awaiting those who seek increasing levels of challenge.”
Hexworks announced it has started designing the "NG+ modifier system", which lets players fully customise their NG+ experience, whether that’s retaining all vestiges, keeping just a few, or removing them completely. It will also include other fun modifiers like a "hardcore" mode (one death = permadeath), item randomisers, enemy randomisers, etc. “The feature set is yet to be fully defined, but our current intention is to release the modifier system before the end of the year,” Hexworks said.
Elsewhere, the latest patch tackles enemy density. Hexworks has improved the ‘leashing system’ by further limiting how far enemies will pursue players from their spawn point. “This helps prevent large crowds of enemies from relentlessly pursuing the player when rushing through a level,” Hexworks said.
Again, further improvements are coming on this in Thursday’s patch, including reducing the number of enemies present in areas where players most struggle. “These enemies will be removed in your initial playthrough, but will remain in NG+, in keeping with the more challenging experience players are seeking,” Hexworks said.
“Additionally, we are going to tweak some crowd behaviours so enemies will not swarm players as often; multiple enemies will no longer land hits at the same time,while enemies will also be a little less aggressive when swarming the player in greater numbers.”
We also have an update on crossplay, which is due to launch on consoles today, October 23, then on all platforms on Thursday.
Lords of the Fallen players have complained about the game’s performance since launch, and Hexworks has further improved matters with this patch. “Our constant efforts for improved GPU stability are paying off, and we see that right now, the numbers have been reduced drastically from launch, to less than one third of what they were day one, yet still affecting four percent of our players each hour,” Hexworks said.
“We are diligently addressing the remaining 0.28% of crashes stemming from game code, while also collaborating closely with Nvidia, AMD, and Epic to resolve any outstanding issues reported by players through Sentry.” More “key improvements” are expected to roll out from now this Thursday, Hexworks added.
And a final word on lost progression: Hexworks said it is “diligently” working on a solution for affected players. “We're setting up a team you can send your corrupted saves/downgraded characters to, which will respond by providing your saves with the required vigor to restore characters up to the level they were before the glitch,” Hexworks explained.
Lords of the Fallen 1.1.224 Patch Notes:
NG+
- Added a new NG+ option that resets the game world, allowing you to restart with your current character level in the same world.
Enemy Density
- We've improved the leashing system where enemies will stop pursuing you after a certain distance (varies by situation). This prevents overwhelming crowds of enemies if you rush through a map section.
Visuals
- Fixed fog card artifacts in locations like the Manse of the Hallowed Brothers chapterhouse when Frame Generation was enabled.
In IGN’s Lords of the Fallen review, we said: "Lords of the Fallen is a great soulslike, and its killer new idea of swapping between two versions of the world to solve puzzles and slay enemies is an excellent twist to set it apart from the pack. That concept is unfortunately hamstrung by numerous, highly annoying technical issues and weak boss fights, but awesome explorable areas and fantastic buildcrafting more than make up for those shortcomings."
Check out IGN’s Lords of the Fallen guide for help with the game.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Continue reading...
