# Blade and Sorcery U11 - The Home Update, is now available - Product: Blade and Sorcery (https://whatsnew.fyi/product/blade-and-sorcery) - Vendor: WarpFrog - Date: 2022-07-08 - Original notes: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/629730/view/3325360490853605276 - Permalink: https://whatsnew.fyi/product/blade-and-sorcery/releases/2022-07-08-u11-the-home-update-is-now-available What's New is an index, not a publisher: every entry below links to the vendor's own release notes, which are the authoritative source. Entries are labelled where they are hand-curated sample data, pre-releases, or drawn from a secondary source such as a developer blog. Reuse: the summaries, labels and curation here are © What's New. Quote freely with attribution and a link back; wholesale republication of the corpus is not permitted — terms: https://whatsnew.fyi/terms. The vendors' own release notes remain their publishers'. --- - **added** — New home exterior map that serves as the hub for Crystal Hunt in future updates - **added** — Map location moved outside the home by the boat, with arrival point near the map when returning from dungeon runs - **added** — Tutorial system on the home map to teach new players core concepts like the inventory system - **added** — Stealth mechanics based on lightness, darkness, enemy field of view, and sound - **added** — Stealth kill ability to eliminate enemies without alerting nearby AI, including neck slicing and hand-over-mouth silencing - **added** — Fire merge effect where two fireballs create a fiery meteor that explodes and devastates a large area - **added** — Fire staff ability to sling fireballs from the crystal tip as an official feature - **added** — Twin Firebolt effect triggered by slamming a fire imbued staff into the ground, shooting firebolts that seek nearby enemies - **added** — Lightning merge effect called the Lightning Beam achieved by merging two lightning spells - **added** — Conductivity mechanics for lightning that bounce electricity to nearby metal targets - **changed** — Combat animation system overhauled to make combat feel more fluid with better parry and riposte back-and-forth - **changed** — Enemy AI ability to defend themselves improved as part of the animation overhaul - **changed** — Animation speeds made uniform and set to an optimal pace for player parrying - **changed** — All spells received cosmetic upgrades with improved particles, trails, and smoke effects - **changed** — Imbues redesigned with better particle and visual effects - **changed** — Lightning visuals upgraded to arc more chaotically 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! ##### U11: The Home Update ##### New Home Exterior 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 ##### Tutorial 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. ##### Animation Overhaul 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! ##### Stealth 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 _[Truncated at 4000 characters — full notes: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/629730/view/3325360490853605276]_