Hello mates! Baron here with the latest B&S news on the roadmap, our next update, and some info on the path to full release.

U11... what an update, eh? ːeaglegagː Our "little update" ballooned into the biggest I think we have ever done, so naturally it nuked our roadmap timeline. But KospY and the team have now been able to go over the damage and adjust accordingly and overall its not so bad, especially when you see what we have been secretly working on.

I know Crystal Hunt still seems like a shimmering oasis on the horizon, so the first part of the roadmap shift is we decided rather than wait a long time for the next update we will be aiming to release a "small" update aimed for December. This will be U12. What is not 100% certain is whether this will all be ready in time as a complete Update 12, or maybe a bit more like U11 where the bulk of the update will drop and then there may be some smaller content patches later.

So without further ado, here are some little teasers to whet your beaks on what the Warpfrog team have been working on for the upcoming update!


I think you guys all secretly knew this was coming... ːwftogrinː When we added the ocean in U11, the natural player response was then to ask for swimming, haha. We agreed it was a cool idea but we didn't want to add a swimming system that was just moving around with a D-Pad.



Like everything else in B&S, we are aiming for an immersive experience, so the work we wanted to do on it was to make it possible to swim using the motion controllers in an actual swimming motion; it worked surprising well out of the box! Likewise we also wanted to spend the time adding new swimming animations so that your legs don't look too derpy like you are moving around like superman underwater, as well as add some VFX, etc.



You can also see that with this physics based system, objects like the oar will have drag and propulsion depending on the direction of the stroke. In fact any item in the game can now have a new component (meaning it could be utilized by clever modders too!), defining a "drag area"; this areas will be able to cause drag underwater and also propel you in the opposite direction as is the case in reality.



All of these small attentions to detail are quite simply because this is the B&S design philosophy, and we are always looking to push physics innovation and make the most realistic VR simulation we can.

There is not currently any critical gameplay mechanic attached to swimming and it is just for fun, however we do have some new dungeon rooms that will have water to swim in and explore. ːsteamdanceː


Here is a little something you probably weren't expecting.



Admit it, since the dawn of B&S you have wanted to break that chair prop over someone's head. Now you can! Or unleash your inner Link and smash a bunch of pots. We just thought this would be a fun addition and might lead to some more dynamic fights.


Something we have been working on for a while now; Dungeons will have a new dynamic music system where music will trigger contextually in and out of combat. This should make the Dungeon experience more dynamic and interesting for those who find it a bit to quiet.

Along with this, we should have all new custom-made music tracks for each arena. (currently we are missing just one track iirc) We have long wanted to break away from store bought tracks to make a more comprehensive soundtrack.
The music being custom-made is also good news for youtubers as I'm sure you guys know that there are some unscrupulous companies out there (who shall remain nameless!) who love to spam videos unwarranted with copyright claims. ːsteamdeadpanː


As mentioned many times before, work on AO never ends and will continue all the way up to 1.0 and then probably even beyond.

In the next update, you can expect to see more combat animations, more tweaks, and some new AI behavior such as the AI now shield bashing you.



Shield enemies in general should be more competent, and will opt for a more turtling and riposte fighting style than their non-shield counterparts.


This is another one of those things that will keep being padded out to 1.0; new Outpost Dungeon rooms.

In this case though these rooms are actually side rooms, or you could say expansions to current rooms. We were able to add doors into the dungeons, so now there are these little side rooms to explore, as well as the possibility to smash enemies into the doors. ːwftolaughː We are also currently working on the AI for enemies to navigate through these doors.



Ultimately the point of these side rooms is that in Crystal Hunt they will contain loot, so in that sense they are going to eventually be an optional loot-gaining venture, but for now they are purely just for exploration.



As mentioned in the Swimming section, there will also be some underwater sections and in the future we are hoping to add even more, and maybe even more complex underwater areas. But again, they are purely for fun and exploration for now.




Now for some very juicy news that we have been keeping secret for a while... ːsteamsunnyː Since around U11 we have been adding a bunch of goodies for modders to expand the modding scene even more.

Before I forget, a request from the Warpfrog devs to modders: U11.4 will likely be the very last patch for U11 and this will be your last chance to report any issues with modding components and get them fixed before U12. Please touch base with one of the Warpfrog team on the discord.


Ye of little faith! ːpraisesunː Heheh, I told you guys Warpfrog would look into it and all this time we were doing just that. We had some technical complications and hurdles that we had to iron out, but the team are feeling more confident now to the point we can now talk about it.

Although we are working as fast as we can and progress is going well, as of yet I cannot guarantee this will be timed for U12. Please just expect it to arrive eventually, without tying yourself in a knot about the exact release date.

The idea is that players will be able to access a mod manager from the main menu and activate or deactivate mods one-click, all from within the headset. No more manual mod installs, although it's worth noting that you will still be able to manually install mods if you like.

Needless to say, this is most likely going to be a dream for Nomad players who will no longer have to fiddle around with apps or link cables and PCs, but PCVR players will benefit majorly too.
As well as being one-click installs, there should also be some cool and convenient filters to sort the mods, but the best of all being able to filter mods by version so that you can very quickly see what mods are updated to the latest game version and what mods are out of date.

Then within the game, there is also going to be a mod options section in the book, for reasons such as if a modder has options to tweak in their mod; players could then access these options via a nice, clean dedicated mod page in the options book.

I will keep you guys posted on progress of the in-game mod manager and let you know if there is any date that is looking likely for release. Remember, we *hate* giving release ballparks only because some players take it as gospel and then are disappointed when that ballpark is missed and this adds unhappiness and pressure for our devs working on it. For this reason it's much more appealing for us to withhold any dates until we are more sure, but just because there is no release dates doesn't mean a lot of progress is not being made!


Mapmaking has been a thing in B&S forever, but when it comes to Dungeons there was always some complication for mapmakers because we were using a 3rd party asset that meant it was not legally possible for us to distribute the full tools needed for modders to make randomly generated dungeons. While mappers could still make big arena maps, it nonetheless sucked that they couldn't do their own version of Dungeons.

Some of you guys who are regulars in the community might have seen me talking about it before, mentioning that the only way around this would be to literally remake the Dungeons system ourselves so that we would have full ownership, and then we could give permission to modders because we own it. But of course as I mentioned, it would be absolute madness to undertake this.... well... ːwftogrinː

A love letter to our modmakers and mod community, we did just this. Now we can give modders our full permission to go nuts.

The idea is that just like our Dungeon rooms, modders will be able to make their own rooms as if they were small maps, and assort them into their own randomly generated Dungeons so that it will operate like our Outpost Dungeons.
Just like all mapmaking, this would be a ton of work of course, but one nice thing to remember is Dungeon rooms would be a lot smaller to make than the usual large arena maps, so I have confidence some modders are going do some amazing stuff with this. It is also more possible that since the rooms are smaller we could see more collaborative efforts between modders; if a group of mapmaking modders pool together and make some smaller rooms, those rooms could be pooled together towards making a new custom dungeon. So no one modder would necessarily have to carry the whole workload.

In theory, a talented modder or modders could even make their own themed Dungeon biome. We will try our best to get documentation to modders to help them.


Another modder restriction unshackled - Modders will have the ability to now make custom armours and clothes without any restrictions or 3rd party frameworks, fully native to our SDK. Again we will try our best to get documentation to modders on how the system works.


Nomad players read these Steam news too, and only because I know I will get asked for news: Still same as always, scripted modding for Nomad is being worked on, progress is being made, but I can't give any release date because it is too unpredictable. Currently it is working and our guy is testing mods with it, but there are still nasty bugs popping up with some mods (all mods are different) and we want to fix that first to prevent a disastrous release.

I know you guys are eager, and some of you guys are impatient, but please remember that this is unprecedented modding support for the Quest and our guy is breaking his back on it already. Being upset or angry for a release date doesn't make anyone move faster than they are capable of and only serves to discourage.



Thanks for your patience!

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U12 will be the last stop before 1.0 release, and the 1.0 is going to be gargantuan since it will have all the Crystal Hunt mode rolled into it with features and content that we haven't even revealed.
Rest assured by the way, that game development is not linear where 20 people all hammer the same nail. It is more like a beehive, with many people working on all sorts of different things simultaneously. Work on Crystal Hunt has been underway even as early as U11 as part of the team are focused on it, but we just don't like to spoil things too early.

However just to give you guys a sampler, I managed to twist KospY's arm into allowing me to show you this teaser so you can see just how massive the stuff we are secretly working on is:




"The ancient Dalgarian Ruins have opened. The nations and factions of Byeth scramble to claim the treasures within; the great Crystal Hunt has begun!"

Surprise! A whole new biome is coming, completely free as part of Crystal Hunt mode, with all new architecture, design, assets, mechanics, lore, etc. It will look distinctly different from the Outpost Dungeon, and aimed to be comparable in size, although you will see that the scale is so much more huge.

The image above is a WIP room only and not entirely finished or polished. If you look closely you may see some little white mannequins - this is just a Unity asset to give you a sense of how massive and epic this architecture is. It will look awesome in VR.

Big fat reminder: this is not for U12 and we just wanted to give you guys a sneak peak of the end-game. We have a policy at Warpfrog of underpromise and overdeliver, because ultimately we don't want to disappoint the players by over-hyping you guys and then letting you down, so we generally temper ourselves in what we show so that when the update does release you are more likely to be pleasantly surprised.

But if you are not a long-term follower of our studio then you may not have known this is our style, and it may not be apparent just how much we are working on. We are always expanding the game and if you bought the game in 2018 for $20, our hope is that you feel like it was value for your investment in us and that you enjoy following along the active development and expansion of the game, which is a huge part of B&S' identity. We are not racing to any finish line!

So I will leave it there with this little teaser; Dalgarian Dungeons is still too far off and we wanna avoid spoilers too early.

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That's it for this news, guys! There is so much more secret development stuff about Crystal Hunt I am bursting to share, but the wisest thing is to wait until we are more solidly in the run up to 1.0 release, and for now we will focus on U12. Underpromise and overdeliver!

Cheers!

Hello, mates! KospY and the Warpfrog team are now ready to launch update 11.3, which contains the long awaited new player origins. ːpraisesunː It has long been a request for more variety in the choice of player skin tones and faces, as some players felt a disconnect in VR when they look down and see hands of a skin tone that does not match their own.

With 11.3, players can now choose from a variety of origin ethnicities, and choose from a wide range of skin tones and hair colours, with secondary colours available too.

At the moment we have limited hairs (mostly Madene style), beards and player faces to choose from, so this will be a constant WIP for our modeler, adding face/hair content any time they get a chance.



We had wanted to add these background options and skin tones for ages, but we also wanted to add something a bit nuanced by putting in the work to create lore for the B&S, so in that sense this is also our first pass at bringing lore to the world of Blade & Sorcery.



To give some context to the player origins, here is the world map for our B&S fantasy world of Byeth.



Our game mostly takes place in the Kingdom of Eraden (the location of Outpost Dungeons), so anyone who is not Eradian would be a traveler or adventurer in these lands. Eraden is a lush land of rolling green hills and farmlands, while some of our arena maps (Arena, Canyon) are located across the sea in the desert Kingdoms of the Khar-Tib; an existential crisis looms for the Eradian Kingdom as the splintered warlords of Khar-Tib have begun uniting under one banner... but we won't get into this too much right now. ːwftogrinː

We have a lot of good lore content written already for each nation - their histories, motivations and agendas, but for now we are withholding it until closer to Crystal Hunt, because it will all make more sense tied into that. So for now this map is just to give you some flavour for player origins.
As we have always hammered, B&S will not have any kind of narrative storyline for the player, but we are striving to make a rich lore for our world in Crystal Hunt mode, which could be revealed passively to the player in-game.
Our dream would be to make our world dense IP, with room for many stories and adventures, creating a coherent universe that makes sense for the player; we are really aiming to push that immersive, anti-gamey vibe that a player in VR feels immersed in another world, and not just a video game.

This now largely wraps Update 11. There is some possibility that we could push an 11.4 patch at some point which may be just some content for U11, but we will see.
In the meantime, our plan is to drop the long awaited "Road to U12" news sometime soon, which will go over the significant damage U11's delays did to the roadmap, and to inform you guys of our reworked plan of attack to get to 1.0 and Crystal Hunt; we know you guys have been waiting a long time for this, so thank you for your patience! We should have some juicy things to share in the "Road to U12" news.

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- Added new character origin ethnicities (only for player)
- Reworked the character customization UI
- Added more colors and new haircuts for character customization
- Added the home local map, to fast travel toward the world map


- Update handle icon and add interactive scrollbars to the item and wave spawner books
- Wearables have changed internally in regard to edit mode, some mods using this may break


- Fixed Post-Processing Profiles not being applied when changed on the options menu, with non-English languages selected
- Fixed a few localization issues
- Fixed culling issues in a few dungeon rooms
- Fixed collision issues with some walls in dungeons
- Fixed mirror highlighter that may stay enabled when it should not
- Fixed some door gap between dungeon room
- Fixed some audio sources not being affected by the options volume audio sliders
- Fixed options audio sliders numeric value not showing the correct value after dragging the slider
- Fixed Pointer not swapping when changing side in menu book
- Fixed armour still being editable when disabling edit mode on the mirror

Hello folks, patch 11.2 is here! Full changelog is at the bottom if you wanna see what got fixed.

But it's not just bugfixes - On top of this, we are delighted to say the U11 SDK is finally ready. ːpraisesunː Modders who were stuck and unable to address issues in their U11 mods should finally be able to fix those issues, and as well as modders being able to access all the new components of U11, there are a slew of modder goodies in the SDK. Some examples being:

- A new ProtoLevel for modders to mess around in, introducing all the new changes
- More examples of how to use stuff, like Doors, Levers and Portcullises
- Event Linkers, which allow you to do stuff like perform an animation when you press trigger with the weapon held (easy example: lightsabers turning on)
- Item Spawners, which allows you to pair it with Event Linkers and create more complex mods without any external code - example could be guns.

We are very, very close to wrapping U11 and then finally being able to fully move on to what's next. This patch is just about bugfixes, but there is one last missing piece of the puzzle for U11; new player faces / skin tones / hair options. This will be the last U11 feature and is coming soon, then anything after that would be just a U11 hotfix. I'll drop some little previews of this on social media in the coming days.

That's it for now, guys!

Modders resources:
SDK: https://github.com/KospY/BasSDK
Wiki: https://kospy.github.io/BasSDK


- Fixed culling issue in library room
- Fixed invisible colliders in Ruins
- Fixed External View Lock not working on Nomad and PC
- Fixed low ocean quality splashes appearing way above the ocean surface
- Fixed some holder functions being inaccessible for modders
- Fixed dungeon debug data (seed and room name) not showing if the level is loaded from the console
- Fixed not being possible to reload the same dungeon level, using its seed, if the level was loaded from the console
- Fixed some locomotion issue in dungeon room LostCove
- Fixed wrong rotation handling of the Falchion
- Fixed handle length on greatswords
- Fixed some lighting issues with the new blood
- Fixed new messages spawning from the last message object anchor position
- Leather Nerf ; Made Stabbing/Slashing/Axing easier on Leather
- Fixed gravity bubble shader issue
- Fixed some canyon navmesh issues
- Fixed Arcwire (lightning staff use) decapitating when gore is not allowed
- Fixed potion decals flashing too large
- Added cosmetic slash and blunt collision effects to leather
- Added cosmetic slash effects to plate armor
- Fixed map board options text not resizing
- Reduced force needed to show blunt impact on armors
- Added loading progression
- SetPhysicModifier methods can now take a negative gravity value, to allow antigravity
- Fixed weird item lighting in Hallway_01
- Fixed holes in Transi_Courtyard
- Fixed walking in to the Dungeon area of Citadel sometimes being invisible

Hello folks, Kospy and the Warpfrog team are pushing a U11.1 patch today that fixes a couple of small issues.

As this is a minor incremental patch, your U11 mods will be fine.
(modders - no manifest change is needed)

Remember, it is only big version updates (U9, U10, U11 etc, the big updates that come every few months with a lot of fanfare), or betas (the optional, opt-in versions that have lots of mod warnings) that break mods, so you should never be caught by surprise for mods breaking.

As a little bonus, our VFX wizard Snooba has included some awesome new blood graphics in this patch for you guys. He made actual 3d blood models from a fluid simulation. Blood looks more volumetric now, so you will notice it in game; it looks great!

Hope you guys are all enjoying U11. ːsteamdanceː We are still working on the player character faces for U11.X, and we will be updating our roadmap soon after we have had a chance to assess the damage U11's release delay did to our updates schedule.

Full changelog below!


- New blood effects
- Improved shield collisions
- Fixed blood VFX being offset when dismembering
- Fixed long wave names being cut on the wave spawner book
- Fixed long item names being cut on the item info page of the item spawner book
- Fixed wave spawner scroll speed value not being capped at the maximum value
- Fixed backpack inventory interactions being enabled before the tutorial area where this mechanic is presented
- Fixed levers not updating analog events correctly
- Updated main menu flags
- Fixed CreatureSpawner Spawn method not callable from UnityEvents
- Fixed characters being slightly rotated in main menu
- Fixed intro trying to play disabled audio
- Fixed blade rubbing end sound not playing
- Fixed rubbing on stone audio not playing
- Crystal Hunt availability changed from 2022 to 2023
- Fixed message opacity not correctly displaying
- Fixed some text being too small with some languages
- Add missing item categories localizations for the item spawner book
- Fix doors closing shut when grabbing anything else than the handle

Hello, mates! The Baron here with some exciting news; U11 The Home Update is now fully released!

KospY and the Warpfrog team worked their butts off on this one, guys. What was supposed to be "the little update" to bridge the gap between two larger updates, evolved into a huge, feature packed release of its own. ːpraisesunː

We appreciate all your patience for this update, and a huge thank you to all the beta testers who submitted robust feedback and bug reports; it was really helpful!

So let's get into it!





The new home and exterior is finally done. As well as being awesome looking and fun to mess around in, this area will be the hub for Crystal Hunt in future updates.

Players will now find the map in a new location, outside the Home and down by the boat. When you return from a Dungeon run, you arrive back by boat and near the map. This is setting the stage for how it will be in Crystal Hunt mode.

There are two Easter Eggs hidden on the Home map; can you find them? ːwftogrinː




The Home map also has an extra purpose of serving as the tutorial map.

Blade & Sorcery has always been a game about discovery and experimentation; we always avoided dumbing things down for the player, and trust in the player to figure things out for themselves, and even find joy in those discoveries - sometimes we read comments about people realizing they can catch fireballs with telekinesis, or stab firey blades into stone, even after a year of playing, lol. But this is great!

But while discovery is still the case, we added a tutorial so that new players can at least learn the basics of the game, and understand some core concepts that might not be too obvious to a new player, like the inventory system.




The White Whale! By Animation Overhaul, we are referring to a new combat system that attempts to make the combat less stilted, where in the old system the enemy is very clearly playing through an animation, you parry, he staggers, repeat.

Instead, the goal here was to try an make the combat feel more fluid with better back and forth parry and ripostes. The secondary goal is to increase the enemy's ability to defend themselves (still a major wip), and then the tertiary goal is to make all animations speeds uniform and set to a speed that is optimal; fast enough to be interesting, but not so fast that any reasonable player couldn't parry attacks.



Let me tell you, as you might imagine when dealing with physics, this is a nightmare task to nail! Please be aware that this is only the first of many iterations of Animation Overhaul, and this will be worked on all the way up to 1.0 release, tweaking, adding stuff, removing stuff, sometimes breaking, redoing, and so on. A huge component on it will be the feedback, and that can only be discovered over time.

Even now we are hyper-aware there is work to do; rangefinding is the big thing at the moment, and finding the balance between the AI wanting to be ready in defending themselves versus wanting to attack. As I say, it's a never-ending game of tweaking!

Oh and on the topic of animation overhaul, it is looking pretty cool in conjunction with death animations!




This is one of those, "wasn't supposed to be a feature but players really wanted it so it became a feature" features, lol. Blade & Sorcery's history is now dotted with these type events. ːtmntleoː

Stealth in B&S U11 works by lightness, darkness, enemy FOV, and sound. Crouching is not a factor in the determination of the enemy spotting the player; crouching reduces your speed and slow-walking reduces your footstep volume, so you may still find it convenient for sneaking, however it's not essential as you can slow walk while standing.



To go along with your new sneaky stealthy persona, there is now the ability to stealth kill; killing the enemy without alerting nearby AI.

A slice to the neck will cause the enemy to die quietly, and you can also put your hand over their mouth to silence them when you grab them. Be sure to let them down gently so their clanging armour doesn't make a lot of noise!



You can also use this new muffle to do other stuff, like... well... this.



Stealth kills also look nice with death animations. ːsteamdanceː




There is enough here that this could have been it's own update haha. U11 brings a slew of new spells and staff functions to finally round out magic.

For a start, all spells got a cosmetic upgrade.
Imbues are looking particularly nice, and now have better particles, trails and smoke effects.






Fire now has a merge effect at last: merging two fireballs will now create a fiery meteor that will explode and devastate a large area, sending enemy and objects hurdling. Be careful not to get caught in the blast!



A staff imbued with fire can now reliably sling a fireball from the crystal tip. Some of you guys may have discovered in older updates you could shoot a fireball from the staff as a little easter egg, but now it's officially a feature, and rather than shoot a fireball in a straight line, fireballs are 'slung' from the tip.



Easy to learn, difficult to master as with most things in B&S!

Slamming a fire imbued staff into the ground will trigger the Twin Firebolt effect. Firebolts will shoot from the staff and seek out the nearest enemy.




To start, Lightning got a cosmetic upgrade of it's own, and arcs more chaotically now.



You might also notice that there are new conductivity mechanics with lightning. Electricity will bounce to nearby metal targets which can really ramp up the chaos when an enemy wizard is blasting lightning and everyone's sword lights up from the electricity bouncing between them!



For merging, Lightning now has a merge and it's insane! The Lightning Beam can be achieved by merging two lightning together, extending your arms and facing your palms outwards.

You will not appreciate how cool this is gonna make you feel until you experience it in VR. Prepare to annihilate!



Next up, one of my own personal favourites from the magic additions, the Lightning Arc! A staff imbued with lightning can now use this ability by simply pressing and holding the 'alt' button. A chaotic whip of electricity will extend from the staff and can be used to stun or even dismember!



Finally, a lightning imbued staff can utilize a slam effect. Slam the staff into the ground to trigger an AOE blast of electricity that will stun all surrounding enemy. Great for crowd control!




Everyone's favourite spell got a little cooler. Live out some Ironman fantasies with the new Gravity Hover feature; while falling, activating gravity will allow the player to slowly glide in descent, kind of like a featherfall spell. It should bring a whole new element to how you think about navigating Dungeon rooms.



Similarly, you can also use the new Gravity Jump when traversing Dungeon rooms. Blasting gravity downwards will cause you to launch up in the air, which is useful for bounding over obstacles.



You could also use it to launch yourself forward, at your own peril... I'm sure we will see all sorts of creative fan videos with this, lol.

And last but certainly not least, a gravity imbued staff can utilize the Gravity Hammer feature.

While imbued, the staff can whip up objects and suspend them as though they were weightless, allowing the player to slam enemy with them or launch the object like a missile. It's insane fun.




U11 is an update that is largely setting up the framework for stuff to come in Crystal Hunt, aka "Progression Mode". As such, we added a whole bunch of new systems that aren't being fully realized in a gameplay sense right now, but nonetheless they are fun to mess around with and see the direction the game is headed.


Blade & Sorcery now finally has a clothing system so that the player can change their outfits.



Armour for the player works in the same way armour works for the AI - armour will nullify slashing damage, but you can still take blunt damage from hits, or get hit on the gaps in your armour.

There are two ways to equip armour - the first is very simply via the book spawner, choose your armour and then equip.



The second and more immersive way is to equip armour via the mirror. When you visit the mirror in your Home, pull the little handle by the mirror to activate the footstool - you don't need to put your foot on the stool, this is simply to activate the clothing system.



Then you will see that when looking in the mirror, hovering your hand over body parts will reveal a white highlighter and you can simply grab or replace clothes by dragging and dropping.

As mentioned before, clothing would be one of the systems not full realized in the game right now, so for the moment there is no downsides to wearing heavy plate armour compared to light mage armour. This will very likely change in future updates, but for now the purpose of wearing a less protective armour is simply cosmetic / for roleplaying.



Players can now store small items such as potions, food, or torches in their inventory. This will not take up one of your precious weapon holster slots, so it makes taking potions into the Dungeons a lot more appealing!

To access the inventory, simply place your hand to your chest and press the spell button to open the inventory UI.

Navigate the inventory by rotating your hand like twisting a screwdriver. The concept here is to simulate a sort of rummaging around your inventory. You can interact with the menu via the trigger and grab buttons.



Also check out the options, because you can completely customize the inventory from look to function, or remapping the interaction buttons.


Although just a framework and restricted to the Home for now, in the future we will be adding it into Dungeons.

So what can you do for now?



'Nuff said.




Swimming is not a thing right now (should it be? let us know!) and travelling underwater has no mechanic attached to it, but we still wanted to show off how cool the underwater effects look in the game.

The water will react to players splashing around with their hands and weapons. Careful not to venture too far or you will drown!





As time goes on, we continue to support PCVR by pushing the envelope when it comes to VR graphics. We simply refuse to believe VR can't or shouldn't look awesome and detailed.

On top of optimized textures and beautiful new lighting, we also have actual 3d brickwork now... which is insane.. and makes it much cooler for climbing. Here is a before and after:



This could be it's own news, and well in fact it was! If you wanna read more detail on the graphics improvements or see more screenshots, check out this news. Do note that these changes only apply to Dungeons right now, but we want to / plan to bring them to Arena maps too.




Although U11 was not intended to be an update that added a lot of new content, there are nonetheless a couple of new Dungeon rooms added for you to explore.




Perhaps a bit of a random surprise, but as a little bonus Canyon got a nice cosmetic and funhouse overhaul. There are now more interactable for your to smash your enemies with, including spikes and a water wheel.




Citadel also got a nice cosmetic overhaul and looks much more interesting and beautiful now. There was also some performance optimization done on this map, so hopefully it is also running better.




Another nice little bonus; more weapons will come in future updates but in U11 we added a couple of small low tier weapons for your to mess around with,


It was always the case that the player could lose their weapon via being disarmed, however this feature was a bit buggy in previous updates and led to many "Why do I keep dropping my weapon" threads.

Well consider this the 2.0 for disarming and hopefully the system will behave better this time!

Players can be disarmed if a weapon is yanked from their hand with enough force, or if it is "over-imbued" with electricity. That means you can no longer infinitely block lightning from enemy mages, but the reverse is true for enemies too!



But we know player disarming has always been a polarizing feature, so best of all, if you don't like to be disarmed you can simply disable it in the options. The feature is also now very clearly named in the options as "Player Disarm -> Allow/Disallow", and not the "Max Arm Length -> Block/Hold" as it was before, which was a bit confusing!




This new item will always be in your inventory. With the latest advancements in medieval technology, no more sliding down ziplines by hand like some savage. ːcozydarkseerː




I wanted to throw this small thing in the news because I think some people (like me!) will be really loving it - Blade & Sorcery now supports custom colour correction profiles! From subtle changes to dramatic changes, tweaking the colour can really give the game a whole new vibe.

We included a few options (high contrast is really nice imo) but we would anticipate modders will add more. ːsteamdanceː


We added support for a bunch of new languages. Currently we have English, French, German, Italian, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish and Thai.

We will likely add more in the future, probably at 1.0 release.


Another small thing but worth mentioning; there are a whole bunch of quality of life options in the book so the player can customize their game how they like it. You can totally overhaul the Inventory UI, disable features like disarming, turn on or off avatar grunting noises, set QOL motion options like crouching toggle or click to jump, etc.

Choice is king!


Something is missing I hear you say... Yes, we are missing the character customization!

We mentioned some time ago that we were working on new faces to add to the game, so that the player could choose from a variety of ethnicities and skin tones. In fact it's technically all done - Our modeler has indeed made a variety of faces, hairs and skin tones for the player to finally have a choice of face and ethnicity.

But the reason it's not in U11 right now is that simply we were so crazy crushed with workload that we didn't have the time to actually incorporate our modeler's work into the game. And since everything else was done and there were no game-breaking issues, we didn't wanna delay the release anymore by inserting another feature that could add a bunch of extra bugs and add QA time. So we decided we can always add this content stuff in a patch later, and work on it / test it while everyone is enjoying U11 and there is less pressure.

Eventually we will have lore for these other ethnicities and nations, but for now it could simply be that players playing as these other ethnicities are adventurers from other lands in the B&S universe.


When U11 is launched and confirmed to be major issue-free, the first thing that will happen will be a collective sigh of relief from Warpfrog Studio, I can tell you that, haha.

Next for us will be fixing any minor issues in U11, although we are really hoping to not idle on U11 too long by releasing a bunch of U11.X patches. So probably you shouldn't expect too much other stuff to come to U11, with exception perhaps of the aforementioned character customization stuff.

But otherwise if we could move off U11 we could go straight onto working on U12 that would be great, since there is so much to do there and we lost so much time on U11 from the unforeseen delays and the beta.

In the coming days we will be reviewing the Roadmap to assess the damage U11 caused in terms of pushing back dates for final 1.0 release. Hopefully it's not too bad but we will update that in the near future once we have reviewed the situation.

Phew, a long news but hopefully a good one! KospY and the whole Warpfrog team hope you enjoy Update 11, and as always thank you guys for your continued love and support for our studio and our efforts in innovating VR through Blade & Sorcery!

_________________



- Added home exterior
- Added tutorial
- Added player inventory, (run tutorial for explanation to how to use it)
- Added clothes changing (using home mirror or “Equip” in item book)
- Added edible food support (apple)
- Added doors and levers system (home only for now)
- Added some new weapons
- Added two new hair style
- Added multi-language support
- Added game translation for French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Thai and Chinese (traditional and simplified)
- Added muffling NPC with your hand to avoid doing noise
- NPC now react to touch, light, bodies, items being held with telekinesis, and other NPCs being held with telekinesis.
- Updated NPC combat animation and behavior for one-handed and two-weapon AI to be more dynamic, including parrying and riposting
- Added rock throwing ****to NPC when the player is not reachable
- Added water interaction with player hand and items
- Added underwater effects and drowning when player (or NPC) stay too long underwater
- Added new spell merge for fire (meteor) and lightning (ion beam)
- Added new magic abilities to fire, lightning and gravity imbued staff (press spell menu when handled to activate)
- Added new staff slam effect for Fire and lightning
- Lightning now chains between metallic objects, imbuing other weapons nearby
- Lightning can now have a chance to disarm NPC when their weapon is fully imbued
- Grabbing an NPC and casting the lightning spell will instantly shock them
- Added gravity hover, charging the Gravity spell while falling slows your fall
- When gravity push is aimed downwards or when you are airborne, it will push you in the opposite direction
- Added real-time lighting to spell charges
- Added effect and mana cost to telekinesis spin
- Allowed player to tele-grab NPC-thrown fireballs
- Staffs will now steal energy from NPCs when you hit them, recharging their current imbue
- Gravity bubble now have an effect on player
- Game now include game version and minimum mod version directly into the game executable (will be used by Vortex)
- Modder pdb files now loaded if available to help with modder debugging
- NPC are able to blink
- NPCs can now damage each other when they're far away from the player


- Canyon level update (new water + interaction, more details, misc changes and additions)
- Small touches and lighting changes to Ruins
- Updated character selection scene with new dungeon assets
- Added some new rooms to Dungeon
- New loading music
- Wave and item selector UI overhaul
- Improved gravity spell audio effects
- Reworked Citadel vicinity
- Improved NPC vision by increasing field of view and how well they can see you in the dark
- Crouching no longer impacts stealth (stealth influenced by light and darkness, sound, and enemy FOV)
- NPCs make less noise when killed in stealthy ways
- Grabbed NPCs now behave differently when grappled so they don't try to move and such like before
- Archers stow their bows when their targets are too close
- Warzone is added back on the wave selection menu
- Improved probe based lighting on characters to be more uniform
- Improved stealth mechanics: AI detection has been fine tuned for a better experience
- Added an option to slide with A / X on Oculus touch or touchpad press on Index (so using staves is easier by using trigger)
- Dual-wielding NPCs swap their left hand weapon to their right hand if they drop their right hand weapon
- Improved staff gravity shockwave audio
- Touchpad press is now used to use staff on Index controller.
- Spells and imbues now stop when in water
- Moved further invisible walls near ocean in some dungeon rooms
- Removed ocean kill zones in some dungeon room
- Improved and changed some dungeon room layout and spawns
- Chickens’ wings are now physical parts of their body
- Added handles to most props
- Show player characters in the menu from the most recently played to the least recently played
- Reworked torch model
- Weapons now lose imbue slower
- Lightning stuns metal-armored enemies for much longer
- Increased arm stretch length to avoid hand disconnecting from handles when too far
- Improved spell haptics
- Small improvements to dying animations
- Improved collision performance
- Improved effect spawning performance
- Clarified the “Max arm length reached behavior” option description, and set the default to “Hold”.
- Removed bloom threshold and tonemap options. Added post process profiles options instead.
- Boosted the damage and force behind the player kick.
- Added audio slider in menu option to increase or reduce the slow motion sound effect
- New “Clean visible dropped items” option. Which will periodically clean up dropped items even when you can see them, except for ones in your telekinesis range.
- When cleaning dropped items, only duplicate of the same item will be despawned first, then any will be despawned until the number of items is under the max dropped items limit
- Added kick audio
- Added new jump audio
- Added a compensation force to the player’s hands to stop them from dragging behind when you walk
- Oar can be put in back holster
- Minor balance changes
- Added version revision, game version changed from 11.0.X to **0.**11.0.X (so change mod manifest jsons!)
- Removed the fake game.json that was used by Vortex in the default folder to avoid confusion and errors (Vortex is going to check executable instead)
- Json file loading time improvements
- Optimized ocean quality
- Optimized item spawner book performance
- (Modding) ItemModuleEdible/EventManager now has consume events
- (Modding) Added code events for telekinesis spell OnTarget, OnUntarget, OnGrab, OnUngrab,
- OnSpinStart, OnSpinEnd, OnPull, and OnRepel
- Gravity hover now only activate when palms are down
- Improve game text translations
- Improved NPCs walking down slopes
- Low quality underwater effects will now apply when quality is set to low
- Fall damage threshold is lower
- Added volume to snap/unsnap in ItemData json
- Added blunt damage to arrows
- Improved performance of Human/Armor collisions


- Fixed NPCs ganging up to attack corpses
- Fixed NPCs alerting themselves by knocking over items, and also fixed NPCs getting alerted by sounds from friendly NPCs they can see
- Fixed NPCs not hearing player weapons hitting certain surfaces
- Fixed chicken duplication glitch which would spawn broken chickens in the home
- Fixed a bug where the player could take damage from NPC weapons well after their attack is finished
- Fixed telekinesis-grabbing an item on two handles, then releasing with both would cause it to float
- Fixed friendly NPCs treating the player as an enemy if the player makes sound which sets their alertness too high
- Fixed a couple bugs with spectator mode which would cause NPCs to spam the log with errors
- Fixed NPCs being unable to move if trying to test the game without a headset on
- Fixed player hand phasing through NPC when grabbing/ungrabbing their parts
- Fixed static items with penetration capabilities having a small chance to move when NPCs are impaled
- Fixed Jar2H json causing hand to break
- Fixed navigation issues in maps
- Fixed broken handles making your hand become unresponsive (detailed log now displayed with how to fix)
- Fixed loading a level before Warpfrog logo ends doesn’t allow user to use any UI (Books and Menu)
- Fixed some NPC parts not changing colour with SetColor (sclera/iris/etc)
- Fixed an issue disabling kick foot collision when grabbing an item
- Fixed Gravity merge bubble not picking up NPCs unless the player was close
- Fixed the game attempting to break spacetime when you try to drop an item that has a holder - such as a quiver - inside itself.
- Fixed missing physics material on Canyon bridge causing no sounds when hit and causing fireballs to glide across the surface.
- Fixed imbue effects generating a VFX mesh every time a weapon was imbued
- Fixed lag spike when imbuing weapons
- Fixed loadlevel during load loading another level inside the other.
- Fixed thrown items not been cleaned up when they go outside the map / far away from the player. Like fireballs being shot out the map.
- Fixed a variety of visual and render order bugs
- Misc fixes and improvements
- Fixed hard crash to desktop on large number of catalog items (big mod packs)
- Fixed particle pooling not growing efficiently
- Fixed armour detection sometimes failing on edges
- Fixed ocean flickering when changing options

If you are coming from Beta 4, more fixes here (the changelog was too large to fit within the Steam news wordcount, lol -- LINK

Hello, mates! Here we are, Beta 4 and more bugs stomped on the road to U11 full release. Truly hoping this build will be the release candidate, so let us know how it is!


Changes / Enhancements

- Skipping the message at the end of a dungeon will bring you home without having to wait.
- Dungeon start now has a 30% chance to spawn on beach and a 70% chance to spawn on cliff.
- Added code events for wavespawners OnEnable/OnDisable and StartRunning/StopRunning
- Optimize item spawner book performance
- Improve some languages’ translations
- Texture quality option is back
- Optimized ocean quality
- Improved body textures
- Removed bracers underwear

Fixes|

- Fixed long texts getting cut, or overlapping, in UIs.
- Fixed messages not automatically dismissing in survival and dungeons.
- Fixed survival messages not displaying the wave number.
- Fixed some armour items not showing any shadows.
- Fixed loadlevel during load loading another level inside the other.
- Fixed Quality Preset ‘Very Hhigh’ typo.
- Fixed unnecessary ocean height sampling
- Fixed bug with level availableOptions sometimes being null
- Fixed some UI fields not being localized
- Fixed ropes breaking render batching
- Fixed home being invisible if you die and respawn inside the house
- Fixed male mercenary headband not visible and causing an issue when the head is sliced
- Fixed shadow issue in Canyon with a flag on ground
- Fixed a lighting artifact on wood planks in Canyon
- Fixed some lighting artifacts in character selection scene
- Fixed loading text just showing after the catalog loading time
- Fixed rare t-pose and laying-on-ground bugs
- Fixed mesh breaking when slicing an arm of an NPC using a mercenary outfit
- Fixed slight rotation on handpose causing two handed mode to not work correctly

Hi folks, Kospy and the Warpfrog team have a new beta build ready! If you are opted into the beta then you will automatically get this new 11.0.68 beta update soon. Don't forget to remove any mods if you are testing this new beta.

It was a couple of weeks of really freaking tricky bugfixing, but here we are - Beta 3 should have all the fixes to the major issues of B2, including missing survival mode, and fixing the crash from clicking post-processing in the options, as well as a slew of other enhancements and fixes.

We are aware of still a few small things, but nothing we felt should hold back this release; you might still find an odd AI pathfinding issue (if you wanna be amazing help out, please take a screenshot and post it on the subreddit if you see any of this). Other small things include a weird issue that sometimes an archer will shoot from behind their back ːsteamdeadpanː and maybe one or two more small things, but mostly it should all be working.

We are really hoping this will be the last beta, guys! The bugs seemed endless on this one.



- Enhanced tutorial messaging system
- Improved collision performance
- Improved NPC vision by increasing field of view and how well they can see you in the dark
- Crouching no longer impacts stealth (npc awareness influenced by light/darkness and fov)
- Added code events for telekinesis spell OnTarget, OnUntarget, OnGrab, OnUngrab, OnSpinStart, OnSpinEnd, OnPull, and OnRepel
- Added more events to EventLinkers
- Improved staff gravity shockwave audio
- Improved probe lighting on characters to be more uniform
- Removed texture quality option as it cause lightmap issues
- Added game translation for French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Thai and Chinese (traditional and simplified)
- When Options>Physics>Clean visible items is enabled, visible items within your telekinesis range will stay
- Optimized performance around home


- Fixed game freezing when opening post-process option page or controller layout page
- Fixed player taking damage during the tutorial before reaching the NPCs
- Fixed an issue where thrown items would collide with the player hand/arms and prevent throwing
- Adjusted handles on Torch
- Fixed a glitch teleporting the NPC weapons in one frame during physic toggle
- Fixed dying animations not playing
- Fixed NPC drown audio being audible from far distances
- Fixed gravity push audio being audible at any distance
- Fixed WaveSpawners to prevent them from failing to despawn creatures that never spawned
- Fixed NPCs not following max melee attackers override from wave settings
- Fixed loading into sandbox arenas when survival is selected
- Fixed the UI pointer being enabled on the world map, when the map content is hidden during the tutorial
- Fixed holes and bad ivy's lightmaps on Home map
- Fixed some holes and seams in the dungeon
- Fixed Valve Index spell button not closing the inventory
- Fixed inventory settings’ option without text
- Fixed returning home from book does not spawn player at the boat
- Fixed dungeon return home not spawning player at boat
- Fixed equip button not using empty hand when other hand is full
- Fixed feet sometimes being frozen in the air when kicking (usually when you die)
- Fixed Arrows rendering in FPV
- Fixed Ocean sometimes not working correctly in dungeon and also causing console errors
- Fixed hard crash to desktop on large number of catalog items (big mod packs)
- Fixed level toggle options not saving values on the map board
- Fixed level toggle options not using the default value provided
- Fixed levels with duplicate map location numbers overlaying each other on the map board
- Fixed UI badly rendering underwater
- Fixed footsteps not detecting water in lighthouse
- Fixed player foot breaking when dying and kicking
- Fixed player foot getting stuck on bench
- Fixed kick ending prematurely when colliding early
- Fixed particle pooling not growing efficiently
- Fixed armour detection sometimes failing on edges
- Fixed effect spawning not properly skipping ignored modules
- Fixed being able to jump and crouch during character selection
- Fixed potion resetting liquid amount after getting out of the inventory sometimes
- Fixed player instant death by multiple hits in one NPC swing
- Fixed ocean flickering when changing options
- Fixed ground in cave 10 room that was not colliding with items and ragdolls

Hello mates! The Baron here with the latest U11 news, and it's some good news! After weeks of whack-a-mole bug-squashing KospY and the Warpfrog team now have a new beta build candidate ready for testing (build 11.0.62). Although there may still be some more room for small U11 polish, we believe the worst offender and most game-breaking bugs have been crushed.

Do take note - there are a few known issues still in this build that we are gonna patch right away. We simple didn't wanna hold this release back another day or two to fix these known issues since they are small in the grand scheme of the beta. They include a visual issue in the distance of Citadel, some lighting issues in Citadel, post-process is not working (can crash your game) and loading Survival on the map is not working at the moment (loading survival will load sandbox). We will also be changing a few small bits to tutorial for full U11 release too.

Other than that, if this build works well for players this build is what U11 full release will be, with the small change of including the few fixes to issues I mentioned above. Otherwise if players uncover more unforeseen major bugs then it will return to beta and there would need to be a third beta build. Hopefully this will simply be the one though! ːotrfingerscrossedː

Many thanks to all who had contributed feedback and logged bugs in the original beta launch; it was a big help!


Update 11.0.62 BETA


- Canyon level update (new water + interaction, more details, misc changes and additions)
- Small touches and lighting changes to Ruins
- Touchpad press is now used to use staff on Index controller.
- Added an option to slide with A / X on Oculus touch or touchpad press on Index (so using staves is easier by using trigger)
- Added an option to disable exertion noise when jumping
- Jump exertion noise will not play when close to enemies
- Updated character selection scene with new dungeon assets
- Changed loading music
- Added SFX to Warpfrog logo sequence
- Added a new room to Dungeon
- Each attack animation has a specified difficulty, and some attacks are filtered out of the pool for easy/medium enemies
- Creature muffle code has minor tweaks
- Improved collision performance
- Merged View and Inventory option menu to a new UI menu
- NPC eyes are better controlled now, and they continue looking at the player even when knocked down or grappled
- Improved NPC rock throw accuracy (It may still need further increasing)
- Reworked Mercenary armor materials
- Detection code has received some tweaks, and some JSON values have been adjusted. Sensitivity is still not finalized.
- Improved Armour detection performance and better thread utilization
- One-handed block poses have been updated
- Added several checkpoints along the tutorial. Dying will respawn the player to the end of the last completed area.
- Show player characters in the menu from the most recently played to the least recently played
- Improved English game text
- Game now include game version and minimum mod version directly into the game executable (will be used by Vortex)
- Added version revision, game version changed from 11.0.X to **0.**11.0.X (so change mod manifest jsons!)
- Removed the fake game.json that was used by Vortex in the default folder to avoid confusion and errors (Vortex is going to check executable instead)
- Removed mod zip preprocess
- Optimized background in Citadel
- Improved footstep detection and sounds. Both for the player and NPCs.
- Wearable pants/boots zones adjusted to make it less difficult to equip/unequip.
- Modder pdb files now loaded if available to help with modder debugging
- Fixed TK on some items
- Json file loading time improvements
- Reduce memory usage for least used particle effects
- (Modding) ItemModuleEdible/EventManager now has consume events
- Add multi-language support (no language added yet)


- Fixed dungeon length option on map being ignored
- Fixed Canyon not having waves
- Fixed Market item book only working halfway
- Fixed missing physics materials in home
- Fixed throwing weapons hurting the player
- Fixed mercenary left glove floating
- Fixed white lightmap artifacts in home
- Fixed Skinning Knife getting stuck in player holder
- Fixed Waist in Full body tracking
- Fixed missing stone collider on big rock in Citadel
- Fixed survival not spawning any enemies after the first wave
- Fixed an issue when you jump while grabbing a ragdoll
- Fixed `catalog_*.json` and `manifest.json` files not being ignored when loading json files
- Fixed whoosh sounds not playing on TK grabbed items from the player’s weapon rack
- Fixed Edibles not healing or adding mana/focus on consume
- Fixed some Dungeon room lighting issues
- Fixed Dungeon Plant lighting in many rooms
- Fixed edge cases where tutorial messages were not being shown or hidden, preventing the tutorial to be completed
- Fixed highlighter occasionally floating in the air after storing an item
- Fixed NPCs sprinting away from the player as soon as the player gets within grabbing distance while undetected
- Fixed NPCs jogging/tip-toeing around dungeons
- Fixed skull duplicating its jaw when stored in inventory
- Fixed Cave_12 having no colliders and making player fall off the map
- Fixed unlit mushrooms in ForgottenEntrance
- Fixed some decals and transparent elements being invisible in dungeons
- Fixed some culling issue in dungeons
- Fixed NPCs getting stuck on the gate in Watchtower
- Fixed Quiver handles
- Fixed an issue causing feet to collide with items
- Fixed some issues with the Falchion
- Fixed NPCs teleporting when thrown into spikes
- Fixed infinite jump glitch
- Fixed collision with player and missing audio when swinging on the suspended crate in Canyon
- Fixed doors not being latch locked on level start.
- Fixed fireballs and arrows not applying force on ragdoll
- Fixed ragdoll “freezing” when the NPC die
- Fixed climbing force being weak underwater
- Fixed some problems with NPCs’ eyes doing weird things.
- Fixed an issue that would cause the chicken to T-pose and not moved.
- Fixed Armour Items sometimes getting stuck to player hands.
- Fixed Soldier Gauntlet Right breaking player hands.
- Fixed Merc Shoulders not being grabbable.
- Fixed holsters preventing armour items from being equipped.
- Fixed some problems with light level calculation
- Fixed NPCs surrounding the player more than intended
- Fixed an issue causing NPC and Items to act like they are underwater in dungeon
- Fixed NPCs entering investigate or combat, but continuing idle animations
- Fixed NPCs standing still when they can’t reach the player.
- Fixed NPCs not reacting when they bump into the player without seeing them.
- Fixed NPCs not reacting when touched by a corpse or body part.
- Fixed long item names being cut in the Item Spawner book
- Fixed pickpocketing detection.
- Fixed characters not showing the correct height in the Character Selection menu
- Fixed reveal materials being initialized multiple times in a frame
- Fixed duplicate collisions each frame, reducing damage spam and duplicate effect spawning.
- Fixed jump exertion noise playing underwater
- Fixed waist tracking not updating
- Fixed infinite loading on restart level after completing the tutorial
- Fixed dll loading time in log being incorrect.
- Fixed animationControllers not being loaded on catalog refresh
- Fixed voiceData inf load when pool size is zero
- Fixed some collision issues with player for some items
- Fixed EffectModuleParticle’s life time being set incorrectly
- Fixed pooling sizes being capped too low
- Fixed the ocean killing player in ViaductZipline
- Fixed the player sometimes collapsing and completely breaking (we hope)
- Fixed ‘Dungeon Seed’ and ‘Room Name’ not being shown in the menu book debug section
- Fixed gigantic door collider in Ruins
- Fixed a lot of props being able to move player or allow player to infinite jump on when picked up
- Fixed items acting like being underwater after holstering them underwater
- Fixed several UI labels not showing the complete/correct text

Hello folks, The Baron here with the good news you have all been waiting for - KospY and the Warpfrog team have gotten U11 into a playable state that we now feel a U11 beta is possible! ːpraisesunː

Please note, the beta is a WIP and we are introducing many new system mechanics that are likely to have bugs and lacking polish around the edges; this will be the whole point of the beta.
As such, It is only recommended to opt into the beta if you are okay with having a buggy experience, or even better if you are interested in actively helping us find these bugs and contribute feedback on your experience that will help us polish.


The beta will also break all your mods, and we wholly encourage you to not try to mod the beta to avoid frustrations. There is a good chance that every time the beta is updated (which would be likely often) all mods would break again. Avoid the heartache; if you prefer to play mods, you should stick with U10, and if you prefer to test out potentially broken new stuff you should play the beta.

If you do insist on modding despite the warnings, then please don't give feedback on the beta as this will give us a lot of false data and may needlessly extend the beta duration! For example, we could end up chasing bugs or performance reports that were actually the result of someone's mod. Thank you in advance for cooperation on this!

But if you are still interested in all this, read on!

1. Right click the game in your library, choose properties.
   
   
2. Navigate to the 'BETAS' tab
   
   
3. The beta will now be available from the dropdown - Choose BETA.
   
   
   
   
4. The game will now download the beta. If no update appears, try restart Steam.

Remember, this beta is for B&S PCVR and not Nomad. Nomad players can find info on Reddit.

1. Navigate to the B&S PCVR Store Page on Oculus - https://www.oculus.com/experiences/rift/2472374902778951/
   
   
2. Scroll down the page until you get to "Additional Details" section and find "Version + Release Notes"
   
   
3. At this section you will see the current game version (should say 10.2.48 for you) - there is a little dropdown arrow that you can click and from there you can select BETA.
   
   
   
   
4. The game will now download the beta. If no update appears, try restart your Oculus App.

EDIT: Thank you guys, the feedback forms are now closed. We gathered almost 1500 responses so we have a ton of data to work with. Cheers!

Here is a link to the beta feedback form: https://forms.gle/bhNQZCoAXSeoNQPm8

If you only want to report bugs and not feedback, you can also use this for here: https://forms.gle/PQd5iZCXYW4kZTqG8

From the hundreds of bug reports we received, newer bug reports that come in are all reporting the same things so no need to report any bugs on Reddit, Steam or Discord as they will very likely already be logged. Thanks!


Spoilers of course, but here are the new features to be tested in the beta:



TUTORIAL

ATTENTION: If you choose to play the tutorial but then go off track don't follow the tutorial steps you will break things and get stuck with no powers, no inventory, etc. A fix to this would be you'd have to delete your character to restart fresh. We will fix this in U11.X, but for now if you opt to play the tutorial, please play it through start to finish.

U11 introduces a tutorial for new players to get used to locomotion, game concepts as well as B&S gameplay design. It is played by choosing 'yes' when asked if you want to play the tutorial on first load. The tutorial ends when the player reaches the Home.

Even if you are a veteran B&S player, please test out the tutorial so we can get feedback. But remember, once you start the tutorial you must finish it or it will break your game.

CLOTHING SYSTEM
Players can now equip clothing. It can be done two ways - in front of the mirror or via the book spawner.

For the mirror, the player must stand in front of the mirror and pull the little lever to raise the shoe bench - this "activates" clothing to equip. Then the player must hove a hand over clothing to remove it with the grab button (a white outline is visible). Place new clothing on by holding it in your hand and hovering it over the body part you want to place it (white outline appears) and release grab.
You can also simply place new clothing over old clothing and the old clothing will be auto-removed.

For the book equip it is super simple; simply select the item of clothing and pick "equip".

If you find bugs, please take note which item of clothing is bugging out and leave the information in the feedback form.

NEW SPELLS
There have been new spells and staff effects added. Specifically they are:
- Fire and Lightning Merge
- Fire and Lightning Staff Slam
- Fire, Lightning and Gravity Staff Use
- Lightning Rework (Conductivity, Disarm)
- Gravity Slow Fall (Charge spell while falling)
- Gravity Jump (Gravity push downwards or while in air)

Mess around and see if they are intuitive enough to use and figure out on your own. If not, check the beta feedback form for controller help and let us know it wasn't intuitive.

INVENTORY SYSTEM
U11 introduces an inventory system which is mainly going to be of relevance in 'Progression mode'. However the player can still use it to store useful health potions right now.

Currently the inventory is opened by holding a hand to your body/waist/back and pressing the spell button to open. Interaction is done by rotating the controller and clicking trigger/grabbing items. Storing items is done by placing them over your shoulder.

ANIMATION OVERHAUL
U11 is the first iteration of AO; a rework of B&S combat to be more fluid and dynamic, and feeling like less like stilted and predictable animations. This is only a first pass and much tweaking will surely be required, so please don't consider this finished.

NEW HOME EXTERIOR
Find anything strange in the home exterior? Please screenshot if possible, and report it in the feedback form

PERFORMANCE
PCVR graphics received a big boost in U11, but there were also a ton of optimization and performance improvements added.

PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU ARE PLAYTESTING WITHOUT ANY MODS!

If you are playing modded or with a bogged down save, it will give us false performance data.

BUGS
Prepare for bugs galore! While we tried to squash as many as possible before the beta, it is inevitable that players will find a dozen more as this is just the nature of things. Hopefully none are game-breaking, but if you find anything please report it with as much precise and descriptive detail as possible in the bug form.

• The work on character customization (more faces, hairs, skin tones) has not yet been implemented into the U11 build. We will try get that done as soon as is possible.
  
  
• U11 has a door framework implemented and you will be able to mess with doors in the home. "DOORS!" has become a bit of a community joke over the past months so I just wanna make sure you guys know there are no doors in U11 Dungeons!

Many thanks, guys! We are hoping this can be a short beta. ːotrfingerscrossedː


- Added outside environment for home
- Added tutorial
- Added player inventory, (run tutorial for explanation to how to use it)
- Added clothes changing (using home mirror)
- Added eatable food (apple)
- Added doors to the new home
- Added some new weapons
- Some armor increases the rate at which your mana recharges, and how fast you can charge spells
- Added rock throwing to NPC when the player is not reachable
- Added levers
- Added muffling NPC with your hand to avoid doing noise
- NPC now react to touch, light, bodies, items being held with telekinesis, and other NPCs being held with telekinesis.
- Updated NPC combat animation and behavior for one-handed and two-weapon AI to be more dynamic, including parrying and riposting
- Added water interaction with creature, player hand and items
- Added underwater effects and drowning when player (or NPC) stay too long underwater
- Added new spell merge for fire (meteor) and lightning (ion beam)
- Added new magic abilities to fire, lightning and gravity imbued staff (press spell menu when handled to activate)
- Added new staff slam effect for Fire and lightning
- Lightning now chains between metallic objects, imbuing other weapons nearby
- Lightning can now have a chance to disarm NPC when their weapon is fully imbued
- Grabbing an NPC and casting the lightning spell will instantly shock them
- Added gravity hover, charging the Gravity spell while falling slows your fall
- When gravity push is aimed downwards or when you are airborne, it will push you in the opposite direction
- Added real-time lighting to spell charges
- Added effect and mana cost to telekinesis spin
- Allowed player to tele-grab NPC-thrown fireballs
- Staffs will now steal energy from NPCs when you hit them, recharging their current imbue
- Gravity bubble now have an effect on player

- Wave and item selector UI overhaul
- Improved gravity spell audio effects
- Reworked Citadel vicinity
- NPCs make less noise when killed in stealthy ways
- Grabbed NPCs now behave differently when grappled so they don't try to move and such like before
- Archers stow their bows when their targets are too close
- NPCs can now damage each other when they're far away from the player
- Warzone is added back on the wave selection menu
- Improved stealth mechanics: AI detection has been fine tuned for a better experience
- Dual-wielding NPCs swap their left hand weapon to their right hand if they drop their right hand weapon
- NPC are able to blink
- Spells and imbues now stop when in water
- Moved further invisible walls near ocean in some dungeon rooms
- Removed ocean kill zones in some dungeon room
- Improved and changed some dungeon room layout and spawns
- Chickens’ wings are now physical parts of their body
- Added handles to most props
- Reworked torch model
- Weapons now lose imbue slower
- Lightning stuns metal-armored enemies for much longer
- Increased arm stretch length to avoid hand disconnecting from handles when too far
- Improved spell haptics
- Improved collision performance
- Improved effect spawning performance
- Clarified the “Max arm length reached behavior” option description, and set the default to “Hold”.
- Removed bloom threshold and tonemap options. Added post process profiles options instead.
- Boosted the damage and force behind the player kick.
- Added audio slider in menu option to increase or reduce the slow motion sound effect
- New “Clean visible dropped items” option. Which will periodically clean up dropped items even when you can see them.
- When cleaning dropped items, only duplicate ones of the same item will be despawned first, then any will be despawned until the number of items is under the max dropped items limit
- Added kick audio
- Added new jump audio
- Added a compensation force to the player’s hands to stop them from dragging behind when you walk
- Oar can be put in back holster
- Minor balance changes

- Fixed NPCs ganging up to attack corpses
- Fixed NPCs alerting themselves by knocking over items, and also fixed NPCs getting alerted by sounds from friendly NPCs they can see
- Fixed NPCs not hearing player weapons hitting certain surfaces
- Fixed chicken duplication glitch which would spawn broken chickens in the home
- Fixed a bug where the player could take damage from NPC weapons well after their attack is finished
- Fixed telekinesis-grabbing an item on two handles, then releasing with both would cause it to float
- Fixed friendly NPCs treating the player as an enemy if the player makes sound which sets their alertness too high
- Fixed a couple bugs with spectator mode which would cause NPCs to spam the log with errors
- Fixed NPCs being unable to move if trying to test the game without a headset on
- Fixed player hand phasing through NPC when grabbing/ungrabbing their parts
- Fixed static items with penetration capabilities having a small chance to move when NPCs are impaled
- Fixed Jar2H json causing hand to break
- Fixed navigation issues in maps
- Fixed broken handles making your hand become unresponsive (detailed log now displayed with how to fix)
- Fixed loading a level before Warpfrog logo ends doesn’t allow user to use any UI (Books and Menu)
- Fixed some NPC parts not changing colour with SetColor (sclera/iris/etc)
- Fixed an issue disabling kick foot collision when grabbing an item
- Fixed Gravity merge bubble not picking up NPCs unless the player was close
- Fixed the game attempting to break spacetime when you try to drop an item that has a holder - such as a quiver - inside itself.
- Fixed missing physics material on Canyon bridge causing no sounds when hit and causing fireballs to glide across the surface.
- Fixed imbue effects generating a VFX mesh every time a weapon was imbued
- Fixed lag spike when imbuing weapons
- Fixed thrown items not been cleaned up when they go outside the map / far away from the player. Like fireballs being shot out the map.
- Fixed a variety of visual and render order bugs
- Misc fixes and improvements

Hello mates, The Baron here with a U11 status report that is perhaps not exactly what you were hoping to hear. So here it is guys — U11 is not ready for release. ːsteamsadː

We thought about it and thought about it, but in our hearts we just don't feel comfortable to release U11 in it's current state as we feel it still needs significant polish to be considered complete, not to mention we are not satisfied that enough bug-testing was done.

Really sorry about this, guys. To give some context as to how/why this is happening, there are just so many new and major mechanic frameworks added to this update, all of which are new and untested, so we really want to avoid a U8 type situation and release something half-baked.

However, we know how hyped you guys are and how long you have waited, so since we have a build that we are playtesting, we decided this — Let's do an open beta.

This way, hardcore fans who are simply dying to play but also have the sensibilities to know that this is a hardcore WIP with fully to-be-expected bugginess and other jank can join us by getting into the weeds in providing some constructive feedback on the new systems, which we will actively tweak throughout the beta.

Meanwhile, more casual players who are not interested in the development of the game, don't really follow B&S news, or are more just interested in the final finished product can stay on U10 and keep using mods. Most of these type players will probably not even be aware of the beta, since it will be an active effort to opt into it, as opposed to it being an automatic update that everyone is auto-opted into.

So, there will be a PCVR open beta sometime next week. I know Nomad players also read PCVR Steam news to stay informed, so Nomad folk, I know this beta news will be disappointing for you; I added some more Nomad specific news here - (link) which also has some info on the long awaited scripted modding.

Next week I'll post a Steam news that will have the code for anyone who wishes to access the beta, along with instructions for how to do this. That news will also have a brief overview of what to expect in the update, so you can know what to test out and so forth, and I'll probably have a link to some kind of a central location (maybe reddit or a google form) so people can post their feedback and we can collect it effectively.

Cheers, guys!