SNEAK PEEK into Update 0.9: Release Date, Major New Content Reveal

CAAAAAAVE CRAWLERS!

The game's next major content update, 0.9, is nearly here! This is the first major content update we have developed since we began working on Cave Crawlers full-time starting in late May. This means all of the 0.9 content only took roughly a single month to develop.

We are very proud of all the new content we have been able to create in such a such a timespan. These are the new development speeds the community can expect as we lead into the full 1.0 release of the game slated for later this year.

0.9 Release Date:

We are planning to release update 0.9 on July 11th, at 4 PM EST!

New Event Rooms:

We are adding 3 new event rooms with 0.9! Two being exclusive to the Molten Collapse and one being a new addition to the Forgotten Catacombs.

• The Forgotten Trial

The Forgotten Trial, a new event room exclusive to the Forgotten Catacombs. It's a large room with a brazier at the center and coals scattered throughout.

Pick up a coal, place it in the brazier, and light it to begin the trial. Waves of respawning enemies will try to stop you from continuing to fill the brazier with coals. Completing the trial by successfully filling the brazier with coals will reward you with a new permanent buff for your character, granting you either movement speed, dexterity, or block chance.

• The Molten Forge

The Molten Forge, a new event room exclusive to the Molten Collapse. Here you can drop any common, rare, or epic piece of loot to melt down into a new trinket called the Essence of the Forge.

This trinket will inherit the proc/item effect of the item melted into the forge, but with a randomized negative stat to offset the power.

• Lava Wyrm Nest

The Lava Wyrm Nest, a new event room exclusive to the Molten Collapse. Break wyrm eggs for a chance at powerful loot and exclusive rewards found only in this event room, but be warned, disturbing the nest may awaken the sleeping wyrms!

New Character Creator:

We have overhauled the way you create new characters in the game! Moving perks, character creation, and skins all onto one screen!

Alongside the new character creator, perks are now tied to your character and can no longer be changed after character creation. We're actively rebalancing existing perks and adding new ones to support this system and ensure a healthy balance.

Torch Expertise Tree Rework:

The torch expertise tree has seen a massive rework, primarily to the right side/support branch of the tree.

With the rework, we are introducing 3 new torch spells as well as a rework to how Cauterizing Flames works. We are also changing how support is built. With choices between buffing other players' defenses, damage, or being more of a clutch/revive focused support.

The Campfire Icons are placeholders for a new spell called Fire Shield, which will put a shield either on yourself or another player that absorbs one damage when struck, and deals fire damage to all nearby mobs equal to 50% of your block chance.

There are way too many additions and changes in the torch tree for me to go over here. It is a huge part of the new content for the update, and we encourage you to try out the new tree when 0.9 releases later this week.

Questline & Task Update:

Prior to 0.9, the task system had some clear issues. We saw players often felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of tasks available, many of which didn’t feel worth going out of their way to complete. With 0.88, we began expanding this system with the introduction of quests and the game's first questline, The Missing Guild.

In 0.9, we’re taking the next step by improving the overall structure of tasks while expanding the quest system further. This includes adding new questlines and creating a clearer separation between quests and tasks.

• Task UI Improvements

We have properly separated Quests and Tasks in the tasks UI, as well as added the ability for you to pin and track up to 2 different quests/tasks, which will allow you to see your progress within a run without having to open your inventory to check your tasks!

• New Questlines

We have one new questline already finished and ready for 0.9 called A Grim Discovery, as well as another still in development that may or may not be finished in time for 0.9 called Mystery of the Runes.

Both questlines offer unique permanent unlocks for rewards and a peek into the game's lore!

Major QoL Changes:

A big focus of 0.9 was to try and improve on many of the game's issues we have noticed throughout the years of development. Many more fixes and adjustments will come to the game as we lead into 1.0, but we believe these changes are a big start to improving the core of Cave Crawlers!

• Player Transparency

Walking through a player and being unable to see anything was a very annoying problem with playing Cave Crawlers co-op, especially in larger groups. We've solved this issue by adding a new occlusion fade when walking through another player!

• See All Regions in Lobby Browser

Prior to 0.9, you could only see open lobbies in the region you were currently connected to. This made it difficult to find lobbies in other regions that still had acceptable ping, as they simply weren’t visible to you.

In 0.9, you can now view all open lobbies across every region, along with an estimated ping for each one. We are hoping this helps people find lobbies of people to play with both more quickly and more often!

• Torch Brightness Fix

In a fix to prevent you from going blind when a bunch of players are huddled around all holding their torches, torches reduce their light intensity when near other torches, to preserve a max intensity rather than a blinding cumulative intensity.

These are not all, but just some of the bigger QoL changes coming in 0.9! A few additional changes include increased chest spawns in larger lobbies. A reduction in the length of specifically the Molten Collapse. And a rebalancing of all biomes' floor lengths. Early floors are now slightly longer, while later floors have been shortened, creating a more consistent pacing throughout runs.

Attack Speed Stat Rework:

One of the biggest balance challenges we've faced has been attack speed. Prior to 0.9, it scaled very unevenly. Up to around 50% attack speed, each additional 1% provided only a modest increase in DPS. Beyond that point, however, scaling became increasingly exponential, with each additional percent providing disproportionately large gains. At very high values (around 80%+), attack speed became overwhelmingly powerful, to the point where we had to introduce a hard cap at 90%.

This created two major problems. First, we were unable to meaningfully add attack speed to gear, since builds already investing in attack speed through their expertise trees could reach extreme DPS levels with only small additional gains from items. Second, non–attack speed builds saw very little benefit from attack speed on gear, making the stat feel inconsistent in value across different builds.

To address this, we've reworked how attack speed affects weapon swings and attacks per second. Each % of attack speed has less of an impact on your swing speed, but you get more attack speed per source. We have also uncapped attack speed from 90% to being completely uncapped. As a result, to reach a similar swing speed to pre-0.9 builds now requires around 300% attack speed.

This change gives us significantly more design space to add powerful attack speed-focused items and makes the stat more viable for builds that don’t heavily invest in it through their expertise tree. We’ve also adjusted many existing sources of attack speed across the game to account for this update.

With these changes, we believe 0.9 creates a more meaningful choice between building for critical strike chance and damage, or committing to attack speed through gear and progression.

Discord:

To stay up to date on what we're actively working on, feel free to join our Discord, where we post regular development updates in our #development-updates channel, and often we pop in chat to chat with players or answer questions!

https://discord.gg/bUPT3bT7hk

Final Thoughts:

There are several new content additions, both finished and excluded from this sneak peek, as we want to save them for the actual patch notes, as well as features still WIP that we are unsure as to whether they will come in 0.9 or a future update. You can also expect the usual new items, perks, achievements, and general content additions you see in any major update.

0.9 is easily one of, if not our biggest update yet, and is setting the pace for what the future of Cave Crawlers development can look like. We are incredibly excited to see everyone's reaction to this update, and we hope you enjoy it when it is released on July 11th!

Please share your thoughts with us on this sneak peek either in the Discord or in the comments of this news post, as your feedback is incredibly important to us in making Cave Crawlers the best it can be!