Dream Cycle Major Update 2: The Reforging

Welcome to the Dreamlands,

Thank you for joining us as we've made the big move from beta branch to live branch! For those of you who played the beta, you'll see many more pins on the map, so have fun exploring! There have been various bug fixes and graphical updates, but otherwise, you'll be experiencing mostly the same game as presented in the beta.

If you were one of the folks who participated in said beta and lost your save data, expect to encounter a note and chest in the Cavern. Please take a look and open it up for some goodies. Again our apologies for the saving issues.

For everyone else, you'll notice significant changes in the game. We suggest taking the time to explore and put aside past experiences with Morgan to really get a feel for the new venture.

The changes are numerous and too many to share, but below are some bullet points of the more significant updates.

Story and Adventures

• New Intro and streamlined tutorial layout

• New Cavern of Flames art and layout

• New voice acting

• New overall story objective

• Added interiors to Adventures most of which are fully procedural

• Adventure objectives now revolve around discovering the outcome of a specific generated sub-story

• Added new Objectives at the end of objectives including Puzzles that can affect the ending of the stories

• Added various puzzle like locking mechanisms and associated clues

• Added traps that can be on almost any object

• Added secret concealed items and associated clues

Map Screen and UI

• Fully updated and redesigned map screen using Adventure Pins unlocked by finding map pieces

• New Dreamlands map art by the incredible Jason Bradley Thompson (aka Mockman)

• Adventure pins show:

  • Status

  • Description

  • Story synopsis

  • Iteration

  • Number of times completed

  • Difficulty

  • Recast cost

• The Adventure offered by each pin is regenerated procedurally each time it is completed, or you can pay a small fee to precast it if there is a layout you don’t like

• Tutorials can now be re-watched in the Codex

• Added Quest log in the Code that allows you to re-read notes you have found in-Adventure

Movement

• Dodge forwards travels further

• All shadow step moves (including dodges) now pass through smaller objects, such as furniture or barriers with gaps in them.

• Jump has been updated to a levitation mode and consequently the old levitation perks have been removed

Combat

• Kick is no longer primarily an interrupt but instead always launches enemies.

• Kick can be held to kick from a further range

• Shadow strike range has been increased

• Added Telekinesis as the default ranged attack when no ranged weapon is equipped

• Increased visible range and brightness of weak spots

• The player will now be ambushed under certain circumstances adding more scripted battles to the experience

• Enemies vary more in size and melee combat can be engaged in while levitating for larger enemies.

Visuals

• Disabled Cel shading

• Light spell is brighter and reaches further

• Astral projection now highlights nearby equipment as well as enemies and objectives

• Improved volume fog visuals under different time of day settings

• Added NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FidelityFX support in the graphics options

• Added new enemy models

• Added new landscapes materials and layouts

• Added new Foliage

• Added new exterior architectures

• Added new interior art styles

• Improved set spawning to populate the adventures more robustly and with less intersection for furniture etc

Optimization

• Optimized texture memory, making load times faster and blurry textures less common on low VRam cards

• Multiple UI optimizations

Whew! That's not a small list of changes; if it feels a little overwhelming, then don't worry; diving into the game and playing first-hand will help you acclimate to how it now plays out.

We'd love to see some photos during your travels; feel free to share with us any screenshots you take on your adventures, either in the Steam forums or the Community Hub itself.

So what're you waiting for? Jump through the Deep Gate with Morgan and get to exploring; who knows what you'll find in the Dreamlands?

Take care and safe journeys!

P.S: if you have any questions, feel free to drop them here, and we'll do our best to answer!

EDIT: For those of you who wish to play on your old save, you can access a previous branch via the game's properties menu in Steam!