HomeGamesUpdatesPricingMethodology
Steam News13 April 20262mo ago

Early Access - 0.8.166

Systems Update: Levels, Experience & Talents We’ve made significant adjustments to progression systems to improve long-term balance and build diversity.

In this update2

Full notes

Full Backpack Survivors update

Read the full published notes in a cleaner layout. The original post stays linked below.

What changed

5 fixes6 additions11 changes1 removal
  • Balance
  • Gameplay
  • Events
  • Maps
  • UI and audio
  • Fixes
changedSystems Update: Levels, Experience & TalentsWe’ve made significant adjustments to progression systems to improve long-term balance and build diversity. We believe this will result in a better balance between power scaling and challenges, without losing the ability to break the game for those that seek the absolute best builds.
changedSystems Update: Levels, Experience & TalentsLevel Cap Reduced: Maximum character level is now 50. This may increase during Early Access based on talent tree scaling and other power factors.
removedSystems Update: Levels, Experience & TalentsExperience Rework: Experience is now shared across a character instead of per subclass. Subclasses no longer require separate leveling.
addedSystems Update: Levels, Experience & TalentsHellfire Rewards: Talent points can now be earned from certain Hellfire levels. These are shared across all characters, enabling some cross-character progression. This means you are earning talent points for other characters (even if those characters are not available yet!)
addedSystems Update: Levels, Experience & TalentsThese changes are being introduced ahead of Early Access to minimize disruption. As always, we’ll continue monitoring feedback. Let us know! General Improvements & Balance
changedProgression & GameplayAdjusted experience requirements per level.

Backpack Survivors changes

changedWe’ve made significant adjustments to progression systems to improve long-term balance and build diversity. We believe this will result in a better balance between power scaling and challenges, without losing the ability to break the game for those that seek the absolute best builds.
changedLevel Cap Reduced: Maximum character level is now 50. This may increase during Early Access based on talent tree scaling and other power factors.
removedExperience Rework: Experience is now shared across a character instead of per subclass. Subclasses no longer require separate leveling.
addedHellfire Rewards: Talent points can now be earned from certain Hellfire levels. These are shared across all characters, enabling some cross-character progression. This means you are earning talent points for other characters (even if those characters are not available yet!)
addedThese changes are being introduced ahead of Early Access to minimize disruption. As always, we’ll continue monitoring feedback. Let us know! General Improvements & Balance

Systems Update: Levels, Experience & Talents

We’ve made significant adjustments to progression systems to improve long-term balance and build diversity. We believe this will result in a better balance between power scaling and challenges, without losing the ability to break the game for those that seek the absolute best builds.

  • Level Cap Reduced: Maximum character level is now 50. This may increase during Early Access based on talent tree scaling and other power factors.

  • Experience Rework: Experience is now shared across a character instead of per subclass. Subclasses no longer require separate leveling.

  • Talent Point Distribution: Talent points are now tied to individual characters. Subclasses still share points, but different characters must earn their own.

  • Hellfire RewardsTalent points can now be earned from certain Hellfire levels. These are shared across all characters, enabling some cross-character progression. This means you are earning talent points for other characters (even if those characters are not available yet!)

These changes are being introduced ahead of Early Access to minimize disruption. As always, we’ll continue monitoring feedback. Let us know! General Improvements & Balance

Progression & Gameplay

  • Adjusted experience requirements per level.

  • Rebalanced boss health scaling — bosses now have significantly more health on higher difficulties.

  • Reduced Elite gold and experience scaling.

  • Adjusted enemy wave composition:

  • Fewer enemy types early on

  • Greater variety in later stages

  • Increased trap damage on higher Hellfire levels.

  • Rebalanced the Ruins of the Flame adventure with increased enemy density and difficulty.

  • Increased difficulty of the Infernal Destroyer Final boss

  • Added minions and increased damage on the Infernal Destroyer.

  • Balanced the enemy types on the Ruins of the Flame adventure.

  • Added new tutorial voice lines

  1. Equipment, Backpack and Talents

    • Updated Magical Dagger recipe (now requires 2 daggers + 1 Energy Rune).

    • Reworked weapon-type modifiers: the most recently applied modifier now determines the final damage type.

    • Increased rarity of Goblin Stone of Power.

    • Removed Bottomless Bag from the shop (pending redesign).

    • Buffed Cursed Mark items and improved their conditional behavior.

    • Improved stats for Candle of Desire.

    • Reduced stats of Arcane Blade.

    • Increased damage of Void Scythe.

    • Reduced initial projectile count of Voidcaller Staff.

    • Increased Whip damage, stats, and visuals (further tuning may follow).

    • Removed melee restriction from Sharpening Stone (now works with piercing bows).

    • Removed Furious Warhammer and its recipe (pending redesign).

    • Reduced weapon capacity cap for the Cutlass subclass.

    • Modified the projectile speed reduction for the Blessed Fury talent from 300% to 100%.

    • Increased the damage increase to Holy Weapons on the Divine Vengeance talent from 50% to 100%.

    • Reduced base damage scaling of Hellfire Skull.

    • Increased gold gained from Golden Key per shop visit.

    • Increased damage on Godslayers Scythe and added more stats.

    • Fixed an incorrect health amount on the Templar Shield.

  2. Systems & Mechanics

    • Merging now unlocks after defeating the Giant Beetle (starting difficulty).

    • Loadout unlockables in the Altar of Change now require the Blacksmith to be unlocked.

    • Hellfire 10 effect temporarily removed due to performance issues.

    • Magnets now appear on the minimap and gain increased spawn chance the longer none appear

    • Lifedrain cooldown increased from 0.1s to 0.3s.

    • Minibosses now have brief spawn immunity.

    • Lowered maximum font size of non-critical damage numbers.

  3. UI & Quality of Life

    • Game now properly pauses when opening the Steam overlay.

    • Added backpack tip for right-click interactions (store/buy).

    • Added tutorial page for Starring.

    • Improved descriptions for loadout unlockables.

    • Adventure Completed screen now supports scrolling for 8+ relics

    • Adventure Completed screen now has improved relic display spacing

    • Increased visibility duration of “weapon capacity reached” indicator in the Stat UI

    • Added Steam stat tracking for Golden Daggers.

    • Improved performance related to coin drops.

    • Updated Arcane Wand sound effects.

    • Updated music for Mountain Foot level.

    • Increased talent tree zoom level (full tree now visible).

    • Added a merging tutorial upon unlocking.

    • Fixed the achievement descriptions for the Frostweaver and Ashbinder unlockables

  4. Bug Fixes

    Gameplay Fixes

    • Fixed talent scaling issue causing extreme AoE values (Explosive Convergence).

    • Fixed talent giving out the wrong damage type (Wrath of the Divine)

    • Fixed spike damage triggering incorrectly (now applies on attack intent).

    • Fixed issues with combination damage types not triggering effects correctly.

    • Fixed enemies spawning out of bounds in Ruins of the Flame.

    • Fixed miniboss and relic interaction inconsistencies.

    • Fixed an issue with selling items while at weapon capacity.

    • Fixed shop interactions not removing frozen effects.

    • Fixed an issue where the 'Are you sure' popup in the shop could brick the game.

    • Fixed an issue where the Hellfire Hood stats were not properly being calculated

    • Fixed an issue where the Bladed Fan did not show a penetrating stat on the tooltip

    • Fixed an issue where coins were not dropping from chests in certain situations

    • Fixed an issue where the last shop allowed for infinite rerolls if the player had free rerolls unlocked.

    • Fixed an issue where luck did not correct affect relics

  5. UI & Visual Fixes

    • Fixed relic VFX color inconsistencies.

    • Fixed minimap issues on Mountain Foot.

    • Fixed DPS display being obscured by UI elements.

    • Fixed cooldown bars not rendering correctly.

    • Fixed incorrect tutorial font usage.

    • Fixed Adventure Completed scrollbar issues.

    • Fixed achievement names not displaying fully.

    • Fixed layering issues with environmental props.

    • Fixed multiple untranslated or inconsistent text elements.

    • Corrected “Pickup Range” → “Pickup Radius.”

    • Stability & Performance

    • Fixed multiple cases where rapid input (e.g., spamming space or rewards) could cause the game to become unresponsive.

    • Fixed pause timing issue during level transitions.

    • Fixed lingering projectiles (Stormcaller Staff).

    • Fixed audio spikes in Mountain Cave.

    • Fixed boss animation scaling with screen size.

    • Fixed vendor spawn placement issues.

    • Reduced the Bloom and glow on Holy projectiles-

    • Fixed a bug where the Tag count UI was not showing up and hidden behind items and weapons.

    • Fixed the font on the Character Swapping UI.

    • Fixed incorrect icons (Titan Soul chest, Demon Turtle relic).

    • Fixed various translation issues across UI elements.

    • Fixed talent tree and relic text inconsistencies.

    • Fixed a bug where a player was able to modify the backpack in the adventure completed screen.

    • Fixed an issue where the merge lock button was able to be used during the pause and adventure completion screens.

    • Fixed an issue where some UI elements would link to the Discord channel unintionally.

  6. Miscellaneous Fixes

    • Fixed sand beetle corpses not despawning.

    • Fixed merge line visual issues in recipes.

    • Fixed a bug that caused empty save files to be created without valid reason

Source

Steam News / 13 April 2026

Open original post

Changelog.gg summarizes and formats this update. How we read updates.