Sins of a Dark Age just launched its 6th major update since the launch of Free-to-Play in mid-May. Here are some of the highlights from all 6 updates:

Meet Penn the Boy Mage!

The first Challenge mode is ready!

Gameplay objectives that can be completed at your own pace over the course of multiple games.

Better skill factoring, team balancing, reduced pre-made party stomping, auto-joins and more.

New methods to deal with AFK players, Virtue farmers, verbal abuse and more.

Faster, more color contrast, better lighting, improved map textures and various unit texture upgrades.

Including many Hero abilities, Items, Glyphs, and Quests.

Including a complete revamp on binding options and the popular "Move to Cast" Advanced Casting option.

Including major graphics and audio speed improvements and more multi-core support.

Including Deep Sea Lithoron and Mad Jester Slag!

For the complete details on everything that has improved since the launch of Free-to-Play check out the following links:

• Update #40
  
• Update #41
  
• Update #42
  
• Update #43
  
• Update #44
  
• Update #45

Hope to see you in game!

Penn is a precocious shepherd boy with a talent for magic beyond his years. At the Seeker’s urging, Penn has left his home to be trained to use his gifts. Quick on his feet, Penn supports his allies by conjuring helpful spirit manifestations.

Introduction
Orphaned from a young age, Penn was raised on his uncle’s farm, north of the Imperial Mountains. It was a quiet, bucolic existence, learning to look after the herd, baling hay, caring for his aging aunt. Even with his failing eyesight, Penn’s uncle could sense something special about his nephew. The way torchflies seemed to swarm around him, or how the sheep would calm at his touch. His aunt soon came to rely on Penn’s help around the farm. But it was not long before all of that would forever change.

Following traces of lingering magic caught in the summer breeze, the Seeker discovered the mysterious child from the northern dells, and offered him a choice. To remain on his family farm, or to set off on a course for adventure, and learn to use his gifts as a mage.

Abilities

• Shepherd's Flock (Passive)
  
  • Penn draws energy from Heroes casting abilities nearby. When enough energy has been absorbed, an ethereal Sheep will manifest, which Penn may collect. Only one such Sheep may exist at a time.
    
  • Penn gains bonus Special Power for each Sheep he has collected.
  
  
• Torchflies (Q)
  
  • Penn sends a swarm of torchflies from his staff in the targeted direction, dealing decreasing Magic Damage to any enemies it passes through and granting vision in a larger radius. The torchflies will linger at the end of their path for a short duration before returning to Penn when the effect ends or he recasts the ability.
    
  • If the torchflies pass through a Sheep, it will be drawn to them and follow the swarm back to Penn.
  
  
• Battering Ram (W)
  
  • Penn conjures a spectral ram and sends it charging in the targeted direction, trampling minions for Magic Damage, and Slowing and dealing Magic Damage to the first struck enemy Hero.
  
  
• Drover's Road (E)
  
  • Penn creates a Drover's Road in the target direction and quickly travels along it. While traveling he is untargetable.The Drover's Road persists for a short duration. During this duration, an additional allied Hero may also travel through it.
  
  
• Paddock (R - Ultimate)
  
  • Penn conjures a fence around target area, trapping enemies within it. Enemies within the area when the fence manifests are dealt Magic Damage.

• Torrace
  
  • Added Torrace's Lore Book.
• Penn
  
  • Added Penn's Lore Book.
    
  • Added new Hero Gear for Penn:
    
  • Ramhorn Staff: Penn's Battering Ram deals more damage but applies a weaker Slow.
    
  • Torchfly Lantern:When Penn's Torchflies are recalled to him, a few of them stay at the targeted position and grant vision there for a moderate duration.

• Divine Lost Army
  
  • Drop off gold reward increased to 175/195/215/235/255 from 120 for the beacon carrier and to 100/115/130/145/160 from 60 for nearby allies.
    
  • Drop off experience reward increased to 450/475/500/525/550 from 250 for the beacon carrier and to 270/285/300/315/330 from 125 for nearby allies.
  
  
• Path to Ascension
  
  • Checkpoint finished gold reward increased to 100/110/120/130/140 from 50 for the ascension candidate and to 60/65/70/75/80 from 30 for nearby allies.
    
  • Checkpoint finished experience reward increased to 260/285/310/335/360 from 80/100/120/140/160 for the ascension candidate and to 155/170/185/200/215 from 48/60/72/84/96 for nearby allies.
  
  
• Raise Your Gryphon
  
  • Drop off gold reward per critter meat increased to 5 from 3
    
  • Drop off experience reward per critter meat increased to 12 from 5
  
  Design Context: Most quests involving substantial map movement were setting participants disproportionately far behind heroes who remained in lane, so we've increased the rewards for partially completing the quests' objectives. Troll's Treasure was left as is since the majority of the time it is a teamfight oriented quest so less relative disadvantage occurs if greater fractions of each team are participating.

• Increase Siege mode death timers to 10/12/14/16/18/21/24/27/30/34/38/42/46/51/56 from 10/12/14/16/18/20/22/25/28/31/34/38/42/46/50
  
• Increased death timer scaling after 30 minutes to 4% per minute from 2% per minute (still capped at +60%)
  
  Design context: This change is aimed at reducing game length by lengthening the window of opportunity to take objectives after winning fights, especially in the later parts of the game.

• Fixed a bug where transforming Soul Snare or Hungering Blade into their respective upgrade while near max Mana or Health resulted in ending up with more Mana or Health than your maximum of that resource.
  
• Fix a bug where Soul Snare was granting less Mana per stack than intended.

• Players can no longer upvote Twitch streamers with vice levels.
  
• A player's Twitch stream rating is now displayed at 0 if the player has vice.

• Removed match search counts and estimated wait times. An average of extremes isn't very useful and for the most part it was just a source of confusion.
  
• Edit: We will be bringing back the tool tip on the matchmaking bar that shows you what modes you have queued up.

• In-Game
  
  • Fixed a bug where a Hero portrait may not show up in the minimap.
  
  
• Front End
  
  • In-game store now detects if the Steam Overlay is disabled. If so, an error message is displayed that shows you how to enable it in the Steam client.

• Fix bug where you couldn't reload your state properly when returning after a skirmish match.
  
• Centered leader's high score in LHC HUD top bar instead of left align.
  
• Updated high score icons for friends, global topmost and global self.
  
• Updated colours slightly on LHC score sorting icons.
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur when resuming a partially completed Last Hit Challenge.

• Numerous optimizations.
  
• Changed Bloodrop to Blooddrop for consistency.
  
• Tweaked the Horen base healing well visual effect.

Version 45529

• The Legendary skin Mad Jester Slag has been released.
  
• Features:
  
  • Custom ability audio effects.
    
  • Custom ambient sounds during various animations.
    
  • Bonus insanity: There's regular Slag mad and there's Jester Slag mad...make way for the king!

• The Last Hit Challenge is a fast paced single player mode where you try to strike the last hit on Horen wave minions before they die. You can play this mode for practice or compete against your friends and the community for the highest score. After the game you can view leaderboards for each hero, and a cumulative score of all your heroes' best scores combined. To see the full details on all its unique features click here.
  
• Last Hit Challenge can be played while queuing for a multiplayer match. If you join a match it will automatically save your state and when you return, it will pick up where you left off.

• Vallamere
  
  • Improved the clickability of Battle Standard's mesh.
  
  
• Forsaken Vallamere
  
  • Added new painting and UI artwork.
  
  
• Shadowwalker Xeros
  
  • Added new painting and UI artwork.
  
  
• Skylance Torrace
  
  • Added new painting and UI artwork.
  
  
• Thorndrake Beroth
  
  • Added new painting and UI artwork.

• Fixed bug preventing you from moving right next to friendly units.
  
• Fixed bug preventing attack move from moving next to friendly units (including yourself)
  
• Abilities and items that have both active and passive components are now correctly unusable when Silenced.
  
• Actions that remove Silence (e.g. Drengar's Unstoppable, Escapist's Cloak and its upgrades, etc.) are no longer usable during Slag's Out With A Bang, while Atasha is in lotus form, or while waiting to resurrect with Vendetta.
  
• Improved collision avoidance and pathfinding.

• The player punishment system (Vice) has been revamped to be less harsh on players who have issues like intermittent technical problems but more punishing for those who are consistently a negative influence on the community. A pattern of causing problems will quickly accelerate the severity of the punishment.
  
• Players are now informed why they received negative reports.
  
• Players who are streaming while under Vice will no longer receive Virtue points. We will be actively giving Vice to players who are not actually streaming anything meaningful thus preventing them from receiving free Virtue points for doing nothing.

• The match making algorithm has been rewritten to better match skill levels of both individuals and teams. Total skill level differences past a threshold will never match up against each other which will help prevent first time players from being roflstomped. Also, as total skill is better accounted for we have removed the team size match up restrictions.
  
• Removed scrimmage match searches as too many players were confused by its purpose. Challenges, Try Hero and Custom modes can still be used while queuing. Challenges even store their state if you join a multiplayer match so you can pick up where you left off after the match.
  
• Fixed a bug where players could get into a state where they are playing a game and still searching at the same time causing them to autojoin other games while in the middle of a different game.

• Leeching Vial
  
  • Flat Life Steal reduced to 8 from 10
  
  
• Hungering Blade
  
  • Attack Power reduced to 20 from 25
    
  • Life Steal reduced to 7% from 10%
  
  
• Orim's Bloodreaver
  
  • Attack Power reduced to 45 from 50
    
  • Life Steal reduced to 17% from 20%
  
  
• Seal of Fortification
  
  • Shield strength increased to 500 from 400
    
  • Shield duration increased to 150 from 120
    
  • Shield strength during quest increased to 1000 from 800
    
  • Shield duration during quest increased to 210 from 150
  
  
• Misc Item Balance
  
  • Detection Ward cost reduced to 150 from 170
    
  • Vision Ward cost reduced to 75 from 85
    
  • Portal Scroll cost increased to 200 from 120

• In-Game
  
  • Non-quickcast ping now has ping wheel support again.
    
  • Fixed bug where alt-click pings would not show up on friendly towers and runes.
    
  • Fixed bug where at certain resolutions scrolling the map to the right or down with the mouse cursor was unresponsive.
    
  • Can no longer open QuickGlyphPurchasePanel in game modes that have Glyphs disabled.
    
  • Fixed bug where quest ability loaded as a cursor action wasn't being reset when quest ends.
    
  • Fixed bug where increase ability level and upgrade glyph panels were not being properly reset between games. so if you left a game with them open, they would still be open on next game.
    
  • Improved the "pick-up" cursor icon.

• Ongoing map visuals improvements.
  
• Added proper Horen shop beast (Hrondyr) vocals.

• Some less important tutorial tips were disabled to reduce overwhelming new players.
  
• Fixed issue of Steam Cloud forgetting about the state of tutorials. Should no longer have tutorials sometimes reset.

• Various optimizations.
  
• Improved lighting model.
  
• Various spelling and grammar fixes.

Version 45343

• Fix to match making causing some players to wait far too long to get into a match.
  
• Fixed up a variety of Mad Jester Slag issues including his missing store art, inventory visibility, and the inability to test him in Try Hero mode.
  
• Community Contributors are no longer sorted to the top of the chat member list and no longer have a special color. They still have a special tag.
  
• Several optimizations.

Version 45364

Numerous community improvements, better handling of problematic players, Hero improvements, user interface upgrades, performance optimizations and more! Read below for all the details.

• Improved punishing of problematic players.
  
• Punished players are now informed of their punishment with a dialog giving them the option to "Appeal" or "Accept" their punishment. Choosing to appeal the punishment may result in further punishment if our review of the appeal shows the punishment was justified. Do not appeal if you are not confident in your case.
  
• Improved AFK detection.
  
• The "Thumbs Down" button now flashes if a player was identified as AFK hopefully reminding players to down-vote them. The button's tooltip also informs of the reason for the flashing.
  
• Added code to auto-kick players from the server if they haven't picked a hero by the time the countdown finishes. This prevents games from starting with AFK players as the match will be auto-aborted.
  
• Players in Scrimmage games will now auto-join any queue pops. This should reduce the number of queue declines and helps reinforce the intent of Scrimmage mode.
  
• Added some new Community Contributors and other special titles.

• Atasha
  
  • Fixed a bug with Atasha's abilities where they didn't share cooldowns between their normal and empowered states.
    
  • Fire Ball (Both Empowered and Normal)
    
    • Cooldowns were reduced to 9.5/7.0/6.5/5.0 (from 10.0/9.5/9.0/8.5)
  • Wall of Flame
    
    • Cooldowns were reduced to 18.0/17.0/16.0/15.0 (from 25.0/23.0/21.0/19.0)
      
    • Range was increased to 7.5 (from 6.0)
  
  
• Vallamere
  
  • Improved readability by adjusting contrast and saturation on color texture map.
    
  • Vallamere's Battle Standard has had its casting times decreased to make his Q-W combo much snappier.
    
    • ExecuteTime reduced to 0.25 (from 0.454)
      
    • CommitTime reduced to 0.26 (from 0.471)
      
    • StopTime reduced to 0.33 (from 0.6)
  • Wired up the "on allied hero" effect for Vallamere's Battle Standard.
    
  • Adjusted dissolve time of Vallamere's Battle Standard.
    
  • Updated Vallamere's Battle Standard Animation.
  
  
• Bataar
  
  • Dazing Blows' enhanced attack now gets consumed when Bataar attacks a Structure or a ward. (Note: Towers will not have their attack reduced slowed by Dazing Blows)
  
  
• Slivus
  
  • Ravage's enhanced attack now gets consumed when Slivus attacks a structure or a ward. (Note: AoE damage will not be procced when attacking structures or wards)
  
  
• Vexie
  
  • Fixed the slow where Resize was not being dispelled by crowd control removal effects.
  
  
• Ziri
  
  • Tumbling Blade's enhanced attack now gets consumed when Ziri attacks a Structure or a ward.
  
  
• Skalla
  
  • Fix Skalla's Predatory Instincts triggering Bleeding more often than intended.
  
  
• Ermuk
  
  • Improved readability by adjusting contrast and saturation on color texture map.
  
  
• Serewyn
  
  • Improved readability by adjusting contrast and saturation on color texture map.

• In-Game
  
  • Active items now have indicator overlays. A gold border indicates they can be used and a grey border means they are currently disabled. Items without actives show no border.
    
  • Updated Shop Undo Button.
    
  • GameOverWindow no longer closes with Enter key so won't be closed by chatting when game ends.
    
  • Left clicking outside an active chat window in game will now deactivate it.
    
  • Scrollwheel works on the item shop listbox without the listbox needing focus (so can scroll as soon as you open the shop).
    
  • Fixed bug where dragging the camera in minimap window with left mousebutton and right clicking to move hero would stop the dragging prematurely.
    
  • QuickGlyphPurchasePanel no longer traps all mouse button up events if not visible.
• Front End
  
  • Added a 'Leave Party' button to the Party Chat Panel.
    
  • Each General Chat channel now caps at 100 players.
    
  • Chat channel member list box syncing no longer wipes out the scrolled position.
• Advanced Casting
  
  • Advanced casting moved from a keybindings dialog to a tab on the options screen.
    
  • Added a new Advanced Casting option called "Move to Cast" that controls if point targeted abilities move to get within range or not.
    
    • If enabled: When the cursor position is outside of this ability's range then your hero will move to get within range.
      
    • If disabled: When the cursor position is outside of this ability's range the ability will be cast at maximum range.
      
    • For example consider Drengar's W: if Move to Cast is disabled he will now leap to the maximum extents of his range in the direction of the cursor instead of moving to get in range of the cursor position before leaping.

• Various performance optimizations.
  
• A number of lobby network traffic optimizations.
  
• At the end of every match you can press the "Send Performance" button to give us feedback and data that will help us narrow down performance issues.

• Fixed bug in party system that could cause the client to go out of sync with the server.
  
• Empire and Horen Wave minions: Increased brightness on color map slightly to make them more readable.
  
• Spelling and grammar fixes.

Version 44822

• The Mythical skin Deep Sea Lithoron has been released.
  
• Features
  
  • Custom ability visual and audio effects.
    
  • Custom ambient sounds during various animations.

• Improved the contents of chests that can be opened with purchased keys.
  
• Fixed bug where Twitter reward chests were not being delivered. If you re-register your account it will appear in your inventory.

• Atasha
  
  • Updated some of her Ability Icons to match the rest of them.
    
  • Fixed bug where Atasha's empowered abilities were not respecting the advanced casting settings. Only the normal abilities were. Thanks reddit!
• Drengar
  
  • Fixed a bug where he would spam his vocal dialog whenever he was participating in the Valkryn's Watch quest.
• Khagas
  
  • Fixed an incorrect piece of text in his Blinding Shot's buff tooltip.
• Vallamere
  
  • Fixed an incorrect double description in his Two Handed Sword gear's tooltip.

• Orza's Soulbinder
  
  • Improved the visual effects of the active.

• Sunken Forest (Siege Map)
  
  • The ritual chanting of the Witches in the Horen team's well is now audible.
    
  • The destroyed Horen tower now looks more "destroyed" to prevent any confusion.
    
  • Fixed bug where Wisp Queen could continue casting Aqua Jet while Stunned or Silenced.
    
  • Fixed bug where Heaven Commander in Divine Lost Army quest could ascend while he was disabled.
    
  • Fixed bug where you couldn't right click to capture a Necromancer's coffin that wasn't detected.
    
  • Heaven Escort quest now uses the proper capture bar visuals when the commander is channeling.

• Improved the match making algorithm so that it should be much quicker for parties to find matches.
  
• Fixed some banning issues for clients who can't connect to games through no fault of their own (e.g. network reasons).

• General
  
  • It should now take less time to complete both tutorials.
    
  • Your allied Ai Golems will now be "Hard Ai" and the enemy will remain "Easy Ai".
    
  • A warning dialog has been added to match searching if you haven't completed tutorials as you will be missing valuable Hero Gear.
• Duel Tutorial
  
  • Hero kill victory condition reduced to 3 kills from 5
    
  • Minion kill victory condition reduced to 100 from 175
    
  • Enemy tower Health reduced to 2550 from 4200
• Siege Tutorial
  
  • Now grants XP passively and has increased passive income.
    
  • Enemy Tower Health reduced to 1200 from 2550
    
  • Enemy Keep Tower Health reduced to 1000 from 2200
    
  • Quest order is now consistent instead of randomly generated (in order to guarantee shorter quests).

• Numerous optimizations (with more to come soon!)
  
• Disabled voice chat by default as this can be a real CPU hog while streaming.
  
• Remove the "recommended" tag on virtual full screen. Many machines will actually perform substantially better with "exclusive fullscreen". If you are having FPS issues give Exclusive fullscreen a shot.
  
• Added some loading screen optimizations. This should reduce cases of "Program is not responding". Note that if you do receive this warning the game will most likely still load.

• Fixed bug with displaying the incorrect Twitch viewer count in-game.
  
• Fixed bug where you couldn't give out Twitch Gifts unless you logged in with your Twitch username in lowercase.
  
• Added a "thumbs up" icon to the streamer upvote button.
  
• Fixed bug where Twitch streamers where getting "unknown" has upvoted your stream.
  
• The upvote button now displays as disabled if you already voted for the streamer.
  
• Moved the default position of the Twitch window so it doesn't overlap the top bar. You will need to type "/resetlayout" in chat to get the new default position.

• New Dialogs
  
  • Added a new "Quit Match" dialog, that will show up whenever a player attempts to quit an unfinished match (or the Hero Select Lobby), asking for confirmation that they really want to abandon their teammates.
    
  • Server patches now nicely logout all users with a friendly message box on why they are being disconnected.
• Options/Settings
  
  • Tooltips can be scaled in the options->hud dialog to make them easier to read.
    
  • Added a setting in the Controls tab of the Options, that toggles the in-game Camera's zoom being controlled by the mouse wheel.
• Front End Chat
  
  • Auto joined chat channels will now auto-shard when they reach their new max size of 250.
    
  • Passworded chat channels are now supported. If you create a channel with a password it will be considered private by default (won't show up in the join channel dialog listbox).
    
  • Changed the chat member type sorting and name color coding to give steam friends higher sort priority than before. New priority order is: Self (Gold), Party Member (Blue), Steam Friend (Green), Developer (Red), Moderator (Pink), Community Contributor (Purple), Everyone else (Grey).
• General
  
  • "Edit Hero" has been renamed to "Equip Hero"
    
  • Fixed bug in the Hero selection lobby where Hero ability icons showed up but no mesh was visible.
    
  • Added 'Community Contributor' as a specialized chat name colour, and added a 'Community Contributor' tag for Player tooltips.
    
  • The View Stats and reward boxes now come up at the correct time at the end of a match.
    
  • The Post Game screen now shows the proper defeat underlay in the top left corner.
    
  • Advanced casting icons for items and glyphs implemented, as well as tooltip icon for advanced casting button.
    
  • All ComboBoxes no longer respond to mouse wheel events when focused so that the nearby Listboxes can be scrolled.

• Chat
  
  • Fixed steam chat not handling enter (would give invalid command error). Now just closes the window as what is probably expected.
    
  • Typing "/resetlayout" in chat works for all 3 chat windows (Match, Steam & Twitch) now (i.e: it will reset them all).

• Revamp of the Top Rated Replays list box to be much nicer looking and shows heroes in teams.
  
• Added Top Rated Replays listbox tooltip.

• Updates to Russian text.

All display related settings will be reset. This should be rare and steps were taken this update to make it more rare.

• Fixed major performance issue caused by bug in General Chat.

Version 44651

Sins of a Dark Age is now available as a Free to Play game worldwide!

We flipped and switch and also launched a major new update that includes reworks for Atasha, Slag, Khagas and Adventurer's Bounty. We also added tutorials, a Top Rated Replay system, Ai upgrades, tons of new Hero vocals, additional languages and more!

You can read all the details on the massive list of changes at http://steamcommunity.com/app/251970/discussions/7/613957600529325134/

After more than a year of Early Access, Sins of a Dark Age will launch globally as a free to play game. Mark your calendars, muster your friends, and prepare for nonstop battles on May 8th PST. Be ready for more surprises!

We’d like to extend a huge THANK YOU to our dedicated and patient fans. We appreciate all the help you gave us during Early Access. A special thanks to the volunteers who helped with translation, promotion, the wiki, and QA.

Please help spread the word by directing your friends and clubs to our new website sinsofadarkage.com which showcases the top 10 reasons to play. You’re also welcome to download these banners and post them everywhere. Please link them to the new site.

• Post a review on Steam https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fcf2JWbrCus
  
• Tell streamers and broadcasters to check out sinsofadarkage.com on May 8th
  
• Talk about SOADA on Reddit:
  /r/moba
  /r/pcgaming
  /r/gaming
  /r/sinsofdarkage
  /r/MMORPG
  /r/RealTimeStrategy
  /r/StrategyGames
  /r/HorrorGaming
  /r/rpg_gamers
  
• Talk about SOADA on Twitch streams
  
• Introduce SOADA on forums, especially on Steam
  
• Post on Facebook and Tweet the website
  
• Create a SOADA clan or fan page on social media
  
• Email and message your friends about this new free game
  
• Post and comment on SOADA YouTube videos
  
• Add a SOADA website link to your signature
  
• Email game magazines
  
• Recruit sinners at school, work and game shops
  
• Plan a game release party

The Horen are coming…

A black cloud falls over the Sunken Forest, a menacing darkness that moves against the wind. As it draws near, it becomes a mass of bird-like shapes, wingtips jutting out of its edges. The hideous cry of carrion-eaters begins to fill the air. A flock of valkryn descends upon the Northern edge of the Forest, savagely squabbling with each other in mid-flight. There are giants among them, with wings near as wide as a blackship's sails. They are savage beasts, clawing, biting, snarling amongst themselves, the giants sometimes spitting up great gobs of acid that sizzle on the ground, the runts occasionally swooping down to take food from their masters.

The Horen are coming…

Like the sea that crashes against rock-strewn shore, like the waves that drag men down into the depths, so churns the blood of the Horen. Savage, marauding, and dangerous. With great beasts of burden at their sides, carrying pieces of their disassembled blackships, with valkryn overhead, they claim their encampment. They are oblivious to the pleas for mercy from the poor wretches previously stationed there.

The Horen are coming…

They burn the homes of the southmen and hoist their corpses upon their towers as a warning to their enemies. They feed their scraps to the valkryn and the deathhounds, and from their bones they fashion weapons, armor, and masks. The giant valkryn perch upon the towers, spitting and hissing as the Horen march to war.

The Horen are here…

• Added a ton of new Horen faction assets including a new keep, shop, well, terrain, catapults and towers.
  
• More Horen content will be added over the next few updates.

• Founder Vexie has now been added to the Founder Bundle. It costs the same price but now includes one extra skin.
  
• Anyone who previously purchased the Founder Bundle should now find a free Founder Vexie in their inventory.

• Skalla
  
  • Fixed Skalla's traps not properly refreshing Bleed on targets who are already afflicted with Bleed.
• Vallamere
  
  • Fixed a bug where the splash damage from Might of the Empire was damaging Structures and Wards.
• Standardized attack ranges of all melee heroes.

• Battleborn Axe and Heart of Valor now show the number of stacks they have in the Active Buffs Window.

Leader of the Pack
• Recipe changed to Merchant's Vest + Leeching Vial + Dagger + 800 gold from Short Sword + Leeching Vial + Rapier + 775 gold
  
• Total cost reduced to 2715 from 3205
  
• Now grants 250 Health
  
• No longer grants Attack Power or Attack Speed
  
• Life Steal aura reduced to 10% from 20%
  
• Attack Speed aura reduced to 15% from 20%
  
• Now has Active: Summon a Spectral Wolf that will seek out the nearest enemy hero within a large range. If it reaches them, it will apply a 40% Slow and reveal them for 2.5 seconds. At Night, 3 Spectral Wolves are summoned instead. 90 second cooldown.
Shatterstorm
• Recipe changed to Long Sword + Piercing Shiv + Short Sword + 620 gold from Long Sword + Long Sword + Short Sword + 950 gold
  
• Total cost increased to 3550 from 3250
  
• Now grants 10 Armor Penetration
  
• Splash Damage radius increased to 0.8 from 0.7
  
• Splash Damage percentage increased to 50% for Melee attacks and reduced to 20% for Ranged attacks, from 30% for both
  
• Now has Active: Shatterstorm's 3 heads spin around you, each dealing 100 (+0.25 AP) Physical Damage to the first enemy struck and applying a stacking 6.67% Armor reduction buff for 4 seconds. 40 second cooldown.

• Fixed bug where you couldn't pick up a dropped an item (e.g. gryphon food or veric pelts) because it was blocked by something in the way (e.g the gryphon or an altar).
  
• Fixed a bug where you could hear a Hero capturing something if you didn't detect them.
  
• Fixed bug where units may stutter trying to go around another unit.

Front End Chat
• Show Timestamps (real time)
  
• Join General Chat on Login
HUD Chat
• Show Timestamps (game time)
  
• Show new twitch messages (if disabled have to use hotkey to show messages)
  
• Show new steam messages (if disabled have to use hotkey to show messages)
  
• Cross Team Chat moved into this category.
Voice Chat
• Voice Chat options moved into this category.

• Team and ally chat messages are now formatted and colored differently.
  
• Messages to all players now have [ALL] prefixed and the colors are based on the relationship between you and the player. (e.g. enemy player messages are red, ally are green).
  
• Added a new Steam chat channel. This can be brought up using a hotkey (default is "m").
  
• No longer receive channel chat messages while playing a game to avoid any possible slowdown due to spammed or busy discussions.
  
• Fixed a number of items that were spamming the combat log.
  
• Fix ActiveBuffsWindow not rendering the correct duration for duplicate non-stacking buffs.
  
• Fix inconsistency in Path to Ascension minimap state: the active checkpoint now only blinks while it is being captured.
  
• Fix tooltips for neutral monster reward buffs displaying incorrect scaling values based on the camp's level. They now display the uncalculated scaling until acquired by a hero, at which point they will display the actual value based on the scaling.
  
• Fix Leaf Scorpion Offering buff tooltip formatting.
  
• Tooltip improvements for a number of buffs that occur during quests.
  
• Advanced Casting moved back to Options->Keybindings.
  
• Repositioned the replay bar so its not blocking chat and other key HUD elements.
  
• Added a new "Toggle Cinematic Mode" button to the replay bar.
  
• Cinematic view enabled (ALT+C) will now also suppress new chat messages.

• Social Media Links
  
  • Twitter link button now opens directly to home page instead of a pre-filled post form.
    
  • Facebook link button now opens directly to home page instead of pre-filled post form.
• Play Panel
  
  • Button for Tutorials added. Currently disabled as this mode is not yet available.
    
  • Button for Adventures added. Currently disabled as this mode is not yet available.
    
  • All buttons on Play panel have tooltips now.
• Try Hero will no longer double spam the Hero's spawn dialog when button is clicked.

• Players are no longer required to register their email to give out Twitch in-game rewards to their viewers.
  
• Complete rewrite of how viewer list syncing is done. Should be much more stable now and not be desynced from your channel.

• A one time reward chest is now given for following @SinsOfADarkAge on Twitter. Go to the new tab in Profile -> Extras to register your Twitter User Name.

• Added new South African servers.

• Added Italian language option.
  
• Added a first pass at Russian, French and Italian localization. If you see problems with translation please let us know. No need to inform us of lines that don't fit within the space allocated for them yet (e.g. they are too big for the button).

Click to read the full release notes

• You can now watch replays of any games played. Browse through any player's game history to download and watch any game played since the last update.
  
• While watching a replay you can:
  
  • Change Playback speed (e.g. slow motion and fast-forward)
    
  • Rewind
    
  • Disable Fog of War
    
  • Change Player perspective
• Replays from previous updates are not currently viewable. We hope to implement backwards compatibility in a future update.

• Added 25 more minutes of Sins of a Dark Age music more than doubling the existing content. The complete listing is as follows:
  
  • War of the Sunken Forest
    
  • The Last Idyllic Fae
    
  • Imperial Decree
    
  • Vandavari Crusade
    
  • Far from Grodyk
    
  • Sand, Fire, and Coin
    
  • Honor of the Khari
    
  • Search for the Well of Life
    
  • Journey from the Dells
    
  • Beyond the Gatekeepers
• Reminder: A playlist ready form of the Sins of a Dark Age Soundtrack will be delivered to pre-Steam Founders at the end of Early Access (at the latest).

• Twitch Stream Rating system added. You can now rate twitch streams in the game client. The accumulated rating of a streamer will be displayed when browsing streams. Every upvote a streamer gets will give them virtue points leading to virtue levels and rewards.
  
• Twitch reward notification string now has a link to Sins of a Dark Age on Steam.

Slivus
• Slivus's Snake In The Grass description is now "Slivus deals increased damage to enemy heroes while in Brush, and for a short time after leaving it. An additional amount of damage is dealt to neutral monsters."
  
• Updated Slivus' strengths to include "Inflictor" at a power rating of 1
Ziri
• Ziri's Hero Gear Lore for Shadowburst Shuriken is now "The Shadow have trained their elite to angle their shuriken in mid-air."
  
• Fixed Ziri being immune to skillshots while tumbling with her Q
Khagas
• Heroic Shot now grants vision along its travel path.
Vallamere
• Added more vocals and Emote sounds to skins that were missing it.

• Improved rendering of Fog of War reveal speed so fast moving things like Khagas's Heroic Shot will grant vision along its path correctly.
  
• Fixed a bug where some of the back towers in the Duel map were vulnerable to attack.

• Vendetta Changed from "This armor guards against death" to "When all too often death comes quickly, vengeance must be swifter." Old lore made it unclear that Vendetta does not actually prevent death.

• Clarity Changes:
  Glyph tooltips now show the Glyph's 'type' just under it's name. (This was done to help new players figure out the intended role of this Glyph, and to be able to recognize the Glyph pairings we have for each glyph 'role')
  
  
• New Glyph Types: (and glyphs of that type)
  
  • Offense
    
    • Anguish
      
    • Cripple
  • Defense
    
    • Bulwark
      
    • Refuge
  • (Tactical) Mobility
    
    • Blink
      
    • Haste
  • Strategic
    
    • Portal
      
    • Sentry
  • Jungle
    
    • Offering
      
    • Slaughter
  
  
• Slaughter
  
  • Slaughter glyph is now disabled in Try Hero and Duel game modes.

• Fixed wrong value displayed for minimum time to get game rewards in post game reward screen tooltip.
  
• Revised attribute description strings in the Hero Comparison window for clarity. Critical Strike Damage also amended to mention its new behavior from last update.
  
• Camera edge strafing speed can now controlled in the options menu.
  
• Tooltip behavior modified to have a hover time tolerance. This allows moving the mouse quickly over user interface components on HUD to get to edge scrolling without tooltips popping up when not wanted.

• Front end escape menu button now has proper hover state and tooltip.
  
• Fixed bug when viewing game history dialog where the gameId was not being displayed next to the previous and next arrows of the dialog.

• Declining a game in the player assembly stage is now as serious as leaving the game in the lobby stage. Serial offenders will be given a timeout from matchmaking.
  
• Match making server will now randomize what regions and match types are formed first. This is to prevent undesired behavior where North America West was always begin selected before other regions.
  
• Fixed match making bug that would cause clients to miss out on games. Please report any further issues immediately.

• Fixed sync error.
  
• Potential fix for lag spikes.

• Fixed client freezing when exiting game from post game lobby screen.
  
• Fixed up font glyphs being rendered on a multiple baselines within the same line.

It's our Early Access Anniversary! Enjoy Double XP all weekend! 36 updates later and a year has passed. Special thanks to everyone for all your suggestions, bug hunting and exploit discovery! Let's have another great year!