• Ultrawide monitor users can launch operations from the War Table once again.
  
• Fixed an issue which prevented stats in the 'Skills' tab of the Character Sheet from updating when changing equipment.
  
• Fixed an issue where some dynamic stats in the Character Sheet would not display at all.
  
• Fixed an issue where the "Willpower Generation" entry in the Character Sheet was displaying an incorrect value.
  
• Fixed a Softlock where exiting the Hunt Choices menu without choosing an option would prevent interaction with other UI elements.
  
• Enlarged the exit button of the Hunt Choices menu.
  
• Fixed an issue on controllers where pressing A to interact with an NPC to start an event would rapidly start said event rather than allow the player to press A again to accept.
  
• Fixed an issue where the hunt progress bar would overlap the quest progress tracker.
  
• Fixed an issue that would cause an enemy's health bar to disappear in some instances whilst using a controller.
  
• Resolved an issue that would cause item graphics in tooltips to flicker when pressing shift on keyboard.
  
• Fixed an issue which could cause the quest progress tracker to expand infinitely in story mode.
  
• Fixed an issue that would prevent an equipped weapon's tooltip from appearing after pressing shift on mouse & keyboard.
  
• Fixed an issue where unfriending a grouped player would also remove them from the grouped category in the friends list.
  
• Controller buttons with no function in the main menu no longer trigger SFX.
  
• Resolved an instance of broken subtitling in a specific cutscene in Chapter 2.
  
• Realigned the text in the 'leave group' popup.

Wolcen patch 1.1.6.0 is now live. This patch brings:

• Controller Support.
  
• A new UI for both controller and keyboard & mouse players.
  
• Quality of Life improvements.
  
• Bug fixes.

[/b]
[/list]



Controller support has arrived. Grab a controller, sit back, and enjoy a whole new way of playing Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem. You can swap between a controller and keyboard & mouse at any time simply by using your desired input method. While both inputs essentially share the same UI, there are a few bespoke elements for each method that will change automatically.

As of now, official Wolcen controller support is limited to Xbox controllers. However, other controllers can potentially be used with Steam’s controller configuration options. In addition, we will be implementing a few extra features after this patch at a later date: rebinding functionality so you can customise your control scheme and, for those who prefer their shapes to letters, UI icons for Playstation controllers!




When playing with a controller, you will be aided in combat by a targeting system that follows a few basic rules:

• By default, the system automatically selects the closest available target within a cone in front of the player character. If there is no target within that cone, the overall nearest target is selected regardless of direction.
  
• Whilst attacking an enemy already targeted by the system, the target will 'hold' on that enemy for a brief period. The system will not select another target unless a small window of time has elapsed without a subsequent attack from the player and there is another closer target, or the original target is dead.
  
• The system comes with a target lock button that will continue to override the system indefinitely as long as the button is held.
  
• Note that some abilities override this system, such as abilities that have a manually placeable area of effect.

With the addition of controller support we’ve taken the opportunity to completely remake large portions of the game’s UI, partly to accommodate controller support and partly to update and generally improve the player experience across the board.

The new UI elements include:

• The Character Sheet
  
• Two versions of the Player Inventory: one dedicated to keyboard & mouse, and one to controller use. Which UI is visible depends on which input method you are using at that time.
  
• The player’s Storage Chest.
  
• Player Cosmetics: dyes, armour skins, and pets.
  
• Item Tooltips.
  
• The Loot Filter.
  
• Merchant Screens.
  
• A series of Navigation Menus to change screens when using a controller.
  
• The Main Menu.
  
• The Options Menu.

Other UI elements that have not changed significantly have still been updated where appropriate to match the new art style and quality.

Controller Navigation

When using a controller, you can access a radial navigation menu by holding the view/select button on your controller. From this radial menu you can access your Inventory/Character Sheet, your Skills & Modifiers screen, the Gate of Fates, Aspects of Apocalypse, and Stormfall Overview. A short press of the view/select button will allow you to quickly bring up your inventory and character sheet.



Whilst in any menu screen, you can navigate to other screens by using the left and right bumpers, while left and right triggers will navigate between tabs within your current menu.



Whilst in a dual-panel screen, such as the new Character Sheet/Inventory screen, you can switch which panel your controller is focused on by tapping the view/select button on your controller.

• Armour skins, dyes, and pets are now integrated into one menu for easy access.
  
• The Character Information Screen has been retooled to present more information at a glance within clearly defined categories. Additionally, the Character Information Sheet now automatically opens alongside the Inventory so you can easily track stat changes as you change gear.
  
• Autosort buttons have been added to the player inventory and storage chests. Pressing the button will automatically organise your inventory or specific storage page.
  
  
  
  
• Active Skill Modifiers in the Skills & Modifiers screen now have categorised icons so you can determine at-a-glance what each modifier does.

Bringing controller support to Wolcen has been a broad undertaking and has impacted nearly every element in the game, big or small, to some degree. We were deeply aware of how highly-requested this feature is for many players prior to and during its development, and we are as equally keen to get it in your hands (as it were). There will be some unforeseen quirks and bugs, which we will address in post-patch hotfixes after this initial release.

Additionally, we will be adding extra features post-release, including:

• Button remapping on controllers,
  
• Templates for controllers,
  
• Rumble options.

We are keen to hear your feedback on both the new UI and the controller gameplay so we can address any remaining issues and add extra quality of life features in the near future. As always, an excellent place to share feedback in on our Official Discord, where you can share your ideas with the community or send us direct messages.

• Fixed a Skill issue where the 'Erupting Flesh' Active Skill Modifier for Plagueburst would not correctly increase the skill's damage.
  
• Fixed a Skill issue where the 'Expendable Meat' Active Skill Modifier for Plagueburst would show the damage done to the player's summon when exploding.
  
• Fixed a Skill issue where the 'Mortiferous Guest' Active Skill Modifier for Plagueburst would incorrectly summon rats when allied summons explode.
  
• Fixed a UI issue where clicking on Zanafer Stark whilst her shop UI is open would cause the current tab to empty.
  
• Fixed an Item issue where bows were treated as Offhands instead of Weapons when comparing items.
  
• Fixed an Animation issue where female characters dual-wielding a pistol and a melee weapon would not settle into an animation loop whilst attacking at melee range, causing animations to desynchronise from damage ticks.
  
• Fixed a VFX issue where the ice-nova visual effect of the Winter's Grasp Active Skill Modifier, 'Glacial Blast', would incorrectly trigger when an enemy was killed by the skill rather than frozen by it.
  
• Fixed a UI issue in multiplayer where the 'Return to Last Checkpoint' button would briefly disappear for all players after one player had pressed it.

Greetings Ascended,

We would like to give you a quick update about the upcoming Controller Support patch and a little bonus tease about upcoming content. We are in the very last polishing phase and will be able to deliver a whole new way of playing Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem very soon. Play the game with either a Controller or a Mouse & Keyboard whilst benefiting from the almost entirely overhauled in-game UI and the Quality of Life additions we will be shipping with this patch.

Outside of the Controller Support team, our other teams have been busily working on new story content for Wolcen, and we are now deep into production of a new Chapter. We hope to share details with you soon, but, for the moment, we can say that Chapter 4 has been uniquely designed for replayability and will offer something for players who value narrative and players who value endgame.

Thank you for your patience, and have a great day!

Hello Ascended!

It'll be a small update this month as we continue to work on controller support, the UI revamp, and some unannounced projects. However, we do have a few things to cover.


This month we wanted to look back on the progress made by our Quality Assurance team and bug fixers over the months. Since launch, they have squashed over 2300 bugs: both old and new; minor and major; straightforward and multifaceted. Over that time, we have delivered 44 patches, averaging just over 52 fixes per patch.


We’re in the initial stages of preparing for a global balancing pass and aim to deliver it as a mid-term goal. At present, a limited selection of builds dominates the endgame, and many skills and combinations tend to fall to the side. ‘Flavoured’ or ‘themed’ builds can quickly become unfeasible at particular difficulty levels, or abilities favoured for their feel or utility may have to be dropped by the player to be competitive. Ideally, we hope to resolve this by shifting the balance to a place where any build can potentially be effective at higher, though perhaps not the highest, difficulty levels. Ultimately, our broad aim with this pass is to promote player agency and choice and allow for greater diversity and experimentation.


And finally, another taste of the UI changes accompanying the upcoming Controller Support. This month: the updated (and rather beautiful) tooltips. Enjoy!



That’s all for this month, folks. As always, feel free to join us on our official Discord.

Have an excellent day!

• Fixed an issue where item desynchronisation could lead to a “null_umbra_item” dropping.
  
• Fixed an issue where item desynchronisation could lead to the items being invisible or misplaced in the inventory.
  
• Fixed an issue where the internal cooldown of the trade request feature would be 60 seconds instead of 30.
  
• Fixed an issue where the game would stay stuck on "Getting Friendlist" after confirming the "Disconnected from server" notification when losing internet connection.
  
• Fixed an issue where inviting 2 or more players in a group before any player accepts the invite would result in the first player that accepts it not seeing the second one in the lobby.
  
• Fixed an issue where there would be no NavMesh on the bridge in the mission "The Only Lead" in Offline mode.

Hello everyone!

This month we will be covering a selection of topics, including a much-requested gameplay change, some under-the-hood changes that will improve player experience in and out of the game, and another look at the UI changes coming with Controller Support.


That’s right; animation cancelling is coming to Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem! It is still in the testing phase, but we want to give you a quick overview of the changes we are planning to bring about this much-requested feature.

Wolcen’s combat is designed to have a deliberate and measured style and requires the player to consider their situation before using an ability or moving. With patch 1.1.3.0, we changed potions so that they could be consumed at any time, and now with animation cancelling, we are freeing up player agency even more for those who want it whilst still retaining that distinctly Wolcen-esque feel. With animation cancelling, combat will become even more dynamic, faster-paced, and yet still require clever thinking and planning for the player to succeed, let alone survive, moment-to-moment.
To give you an idea of how it will work, any action (an attack, a skill, etc.) will consist of three phases:

• Anticipation,
  
• Hit,
  
• and Backswing.

Depending on which phase you issue a second action in, you will either cancel the first action and commence your second action, or queue your second action. Moving or dodging can also serve to cancel an action.

• Issuing a second action during the ‘Anticipation’ phase will immediately cancel the current action and commence the ‘Anticipation’ phase of your second action.
  
• If the current action is in the smaller ‘Hit’ phase, your second action will instead be queued and will trigger once the current action’s ‘Hit’ phase is complete.
  
• If the current animation is in the ‘Backswing’ phase, the first action’s animation will cancel, and your second action’s ‘Anticipation’ phase will begin.

A skill cancelled during its ‘Anticipation’ phase will not consume resources or trigger a cooldown, whereas once a skill reaches the ‘Hit’ phase it will consume resources and trigger a cooldown. Channelled skills in the ‘Hit’ phase will consume resources until interrupted.

We will be continuing to test and refine this new system for the moment and hope to get it into your hands as soon as possible. These changes will fundamentally broaden the possibilities of Wolcen’s combat and we’re very excited to see what you do with this new tool in your arsenal.


Two important but overlooked systems are getting massive overhauls that will result in a smoother experience for players across the board.

• Firstly, the Transparency System. This system is responsible for hiding objects/surfaces/walls between the player and camera and has been completely rewritten. You may have noticed that the current system can occasionally fail to dissolve objects and thus obstruct player view, as well as having some limitations of performance. The new system is bug-free, smarter, more flexible, and will give players a smoother and faster experience.
  
• Secondly, Navmesh Pruning. This is a very important system despite sounding suspiciously like something related to gardening. A navmesh determines what areas of an environment both the player and enemies can spawn and move on. You may, on occasion, have noticed an enemy hiding just out of reach behind a wall, or found yourself stuck on an unescapable ledge. This was due, in effect, to insufficient or inaccurate pruning of the navmesh. The fixes we’re putting together will allow for far more precise and performant pruning and will ultimately result in a far cleaner experience for both players and their unfortunate enemies.

Both of these systems are still undergoing testing and we will announce when they are ready for deployment closer to the time.

We have made substantial efforts in recent hotfixes to address a long-standing issue: patch sizes. The days of 15GB hotfixes are no more, thanks to modifications done by our Build Delivery team.

They began by examining the previous large hotfixes, determining what elements were essential, and where optimisations could be made in terms of file size, moving, and copying. The main obstacles to decreasing patch sizes were the large PAK files: the archive files used by CryEngine to store game data in bulk. They tested new ways of optimising PAK creation, grouping, structure, and various encryption methods, by systematically generating and testing new internal builds. A large number of iterations and branches were tested, along with isolated portions of code, all whilst simultaneously building patches for actual release and avoiding potential issues or conflicts. This required a great deal of brainstorming, interdisciplinary communication, joint investigation, and painstaking testing.

With these changes, we can push out exponentially smaller patches far more regularly and effectively without impacting the player experience. With that achieved, we are entering a production cycle where you can expect small bug-fixing patches on a regular weekly, or fortnightly, basis.


Last month we gave you your first look at the UI changes that will be accompanying Controller Support. For those of you with a stylistic flair, this month we will be making a trend of it by showing you the new cosmetics screen. The main improvements outside of the updated visuals are:

• Dyes are now sorted by colour and then by shade. No more scrolling up and down trying to find that specific variety of teal!
  
• Each colour slot on individual armour pieces has a numeral indicator, allowing you to cross-reference when trying to match colours across duplicate armour cosmetics.
  
• Pets no longer live on their own but now have their own tab in the cosmetics menu, allowing you to access everything fashion-related with a single button press.

That’s all for this month, folks! As usual, feel free to join our Official Discord if you want to engage with our community, send us your feedback, or send us direct messages regarding anything Wolcen related!

Have a fantastic day!

• Implemented solutions to drastically reduce the size of every patch/update.

• Fixed several issues that could lead to item desynchronizations.

• Fixed an issue where accounts that have already completed the Story in Legacy mode would display Champion of Stormfall mode as locked.
  
• Fixed an issue where some NPCs would be in T-pose during a cutscene in the Vault of Hope in Chapter 2.
  
• Fixed an issue where the visual effect that indicates hits would not display if the character took damage that was entirely absorbed by their force shield.
  
• Fixed an issue where the game would sometimes crash after a long period of inactivity.
  
• Fixed an issue where the position of the "Do not show again" checkbox in the difficulty selection of the War Table wouldn't be properly centered.

Hello everyone!

For this month’s Development Update we will be giving you a sneak peek at part of the upcoming controller support, the necessary UI revamps, and the quality of life changes coming for all players!

Our controller support implementation is about more than just reassigning gameplay controls: nearly every UI element has been revisited and revised in a way that will benefit all players, whether they use a controller or a keyboard & mouse (or both!). This will improve the quality of life of all players across the board. To give you a taste of the changes coming, both mouse & keyboard and controller players can look forward to:

• An improved Skills panel,
  
• An inventory autosort feature,
  
• Bulk selling and junk marking,
  
• A unified Cosmetics and Pets menu,
  
• Dyes grouped by colour,
  
• Beautiful item tooltips that allow for easier comparison and greater legibility.

Today we will be touching on the improved Skills & Modifier screen and inventory management.

Please remember that everything here is still a work in progress and entirely subject to change, in terms of both visuals and functionality.


The revised and rebuilt ASM screen is indicative of the direction and philosophy behind our UI changes: it’s a format that seamlessly works for both controller and mouse & keyboard users and will allow players to switch on the fly, whilst tidying up a lot of the older design’s shortcomings and boasting gorgeous artwork. In the new Skills & Modifiers screen every skill you’ve learned can be seen at once and quickly accessed: no longer will you have to scroll through a long ability list when trying to find Wrath of Baäpheth! As before, the skills can still be filtered by archetype but now the buttons to do so are far more prominent and intuitive.



A lot has changed when examining individual skills and their modifiers. When selected, each skill will have a visual indicator of how many points you have unlocked, have remaining to spend, and are yet to unlock. Steps have also been taken to increase how intuitively skill modifiers present themselves. For example, rather than the uniform icon they currently have, skill modifiers will have one of four distinct icons that will let you know at a glance whether it changes the skill’s fundamental behaviour, buffs its offensive potential, increases player survivability, or increases its utility. Further to that, skill modifiers will display their name at all times to help you remember and identify your favourite modifiers when switching things up.


While keyboard & mouse users will retain an inventory layout they already know and love, but with a fresh coat of paint to bring it up to the same standard as the other new UIs, some elements need bespoke interfaces to work satisfyingly with a controller. Thus, controller users will be presented with an entirely new UI for changing their equipment and interacting with their inventory: the Equipment Wheel. Much like the traditional keyboard & mouse UI, this new screen lets you assess your current equipment at a glance and quickly select a gear slot to modify or interact with consumable items, even when using a controller.



The Equipment Wheel comes with a secret weapon: contextual filtering. Selecting any slot on the Equipment Wheel will temporarily organise your inventory so that all relevant items will group and highlight for quick and easy selection. Any items that aren’t relevant will be temporarily unselectable. Your inventory will then return to its previous state after choosing an item or exiting once you return to the wheel. The filter can be broken down further into weapon types and non-equipment items like enneracts, gems, reagents, etc.



On the subject of sorting, we’re taking the opportunity to add an inventory autosort button! This feature will be available for both controller and keyboard & mouse users, allowing you to instantly organise your inventory with the press of a button whenever you choose. Items will be organised first by rarity, then by type, affix, item level, gold value, and finally by alphabetical order. As a bonus, your Personal Chest in Stormfall will also feature an autosort button that will organise the particular chest tab you are viewing at the time. This feature will pair nicely with the batch selling and junk marking features we hinted at earlier, coming for both controller and keyboard & mouse users.



We hope you’ve enjoyed this little preview and that it’s given you a better idea of what to expect when controller support arrives.

As always you are welcome to join us on our Official Discord.

• Added an animation showing the number of skulls earned, difficulty level and difficulty tiers unlocked when opening the War Table.
  
• Added a "Do not show again" checkbox confirmation pop-up in the difficulty selection part of the War Table.
  
• The last difficulty played will be the default one when opening the War Table UI, unless a new difficulty has been unlocked in the meantime.

• Fixed an issue where hovering a reward in the War Table would not always display the comparison window.
  
• Fixed an issue where the productivity and item quantity multiplicator would not always be properly displayed for some consumables.
  
• Fixed an issue where Mercy would start his jumping animation in the air instead of on his throne.
  
• Fixed an issue where picking an Offering Shrine reward after killing the Sarisel boss would display a UI partially blocking the victory screen.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Hauntstone’s animation would loop.
  
• Fixed an issue where some parts of the map background in the War Table would be visible Ultra wide when they shouldn't.