Welcome back Wanderers to the biggest Update we have ever done for any of our games. Since our last content update for SfL we worked hard to try out and evaluate new directions and concepts with the release of SfL: Survival. We have gathered plenty of feedback and consolidated everything to this massive update that will make SfL appear like a new game with so much new content and QoL improvements. This being said thanks for all your feedback and suggestions that helped bringing Striving for Light to the point.

New Features

New League Start - EA Season 8

With the first warm breezes the remaining snow is melting and heralding the spring in Ankerath. So with Update 0.8 we are starting off the new Early Access Season 8 for Striving for Light. We did heavy balancing changes that speed up and intensify the early game experience but also tweaked endgame to make it more challenging. More about balancing changes later on. New NPC models have also been added to the game.

5 Difficulty Tiers To Compete

For the very first time we are introducing difficulty tiers to Striving for Light. You will start with Tier 1 and progress as usual. But once you have reached level 60 the next difficulty tier will be unlocked. For the next run you can now choose between those unlocked difficulty tiers in the pathfinder on the new difficulty tier UI.

You can only change the difficulty setting before you actually starting your run. Once you have activated your first map from the pathfinder the difficulty setting is locked and can earlies be changed on the start of your next run. All difficulty tiers come with their own leaderboard. So with update 0.8 you will have 5 seasonal leaderboard to compete against other players. These changes of course also carry over to private leagues. You will also be able to compete against your friends in the private league on those 5 leaderboards.

For each difficulty tier enemy HP get increased by +50% and the elite spawn possibility is increasing by +3%. Yes you have read correctly we are adding elite enemies to SfL. More about them later. Difficulty tiers are designed to impose additional challenges will need optimised build setups and maybe some preparation before taking on a Tier 5 run!

The current difficulty tier is also displayed on the ingame UI next to the delve count.

Armory Build Viewer

Talking or leaderboards we are extending the leaderboard system by implementing a armory build viewer which lets you view others builds on the leaderboard by clicking the character icon on the entry. You will not only be able to see the character stats but also the chosen skills and the equiped weapons including their stats and the embedded legendary ability.

In-game Achievements

With this update we are also adding an in-game achievement system to SfL. This is the first step towards implementing steam achievements. All added achievements are seasonal achievements which are tied to your savegames. The achievements not only give a great overview over all weapons and skills that can be unlocked but also hold some information on how these can be unlocked. It also serves as a tool to check what skills and weapons are currently available in your runs and what still has to be unlocked. This should also help guiding new players. Currently there are over 150 seasonal achievements awaiting to be completed.

Elite Enemies

We are also introducing a new elite enemy mechanic which adds the possibility to enemies to be spawned as elite version. These elite enemies have 10x the HP of the regular enemy but therefore give a guaranteed special light fragment drop, which also grants you additional 3x the EXP of a regular enemy. Since the elite enemy spawn scales with the difficulty tier you will have the chance to grab some extra EXP and light fragments on higher tier runs.

New Melee Weapon: Bear Caller

Each of your melee attacks calls a bear which attacks for you. The bear attacks are treated as your own attack and can trigger all your melee on hit and on attack effects.

New Range Attack Replacer Skill: Projectile Shield

Your projectiles surround you like a projectice shield.

New Melee On Attack Skill: Fissure

Your melee attacks tear the ground and create a fissure traveling away from you. Fissure has the chance to replicate itself with a 50% chance.

New Critical Hit System

All attacks and skills can now deal critical hits if your critical hit chance is higher than 0. Along the new base skill node two new stats are introduced: critical hit chance and critical hit damage. Where critical hit chance is discribing the chance of all your attacks and skills to deal a critical hit. Critical hit damage describes the damage bonus for your ciritical hits.

New Life Leech System

A new life leech stat has been added along a new base skill node. When investing in live leech you will regain 1 HP after defeating a certain amount of enemies.

New Base Skill Node: Collect Range

A bit more specific skill node has been added that lets you increase your collect range which might become useful in endgame scenarios.

Korean, Japanese and Portuguese Localisation

With 0.8.0 We are adding support for Korean, Japanese and Portuguese language.

Extended Twitch Livestream Integration

In the main menu there is now a new twitch icon. Whenever you enter the main menu it will be checked if there are current livestreams on twitch in the Striving for Light Categories. The number of online channels will be displayed along a red dot if there are some. Clicking on the twitch icon will open up a livestream browser giving you more information about the current live stream options. You can quickly jump to a livestream by clicking the twitch icon on the channel entry. We hope that this feature helps further connecting the community.

New Damage Number System

Damage numbers are now colour coded to display your damage amounts. With higher damage the damage numbers are also scaled bigger. Critical hits have also received their own critical hit icon.

Striving for Light: Survival Soundtrack Option

We added the recently composed Striving for Light: Survival Soundtrack as an alternative OST to switch between.

Improvements

• Performance improvements for player projectiles and companions
• Performance improvements for enemy movement and enemy collisions
• Improved responsiveness of player character movement
• Improved enemy hit visual effect
• Chests now always spawn in front of the gatekeeper portal to reduce backtracking and make the overall game experience more fluid.
• Player effect transparency slider has been added to the options menu to make your projectiles, skill effects and companions partially translucent.
• Completely reworked all enemy projectile + trap colour and contrasts to make them better visible.
• Added option to give enemies a red outline to make them better standout on various backgrounds.
• Updated some of the skill node textures with clearer representations of the skill node.
• Added option to display player damage screen overlay effect to improve player hit feedback.
• Environment effects got reworked.
• New weapon trails and a new weapon swing visual effect was added.
• Reworked skill tooltip damage and trigger possibility calculation. Skill tooltips got some futher reporks.
• Improved widescreen support for environment effects.
• Added new player level up effect.
• Added new button hover and button click sound feedback.
• Melee constructs can now trigger double hit.
• Fissure has been added as legendary effect.
• Visual Improvements for Double Hit and Clash of Steel.
• New NPC models for Darokin, the old man of Ankerath, Heleja, the scholar of Ankerath and Goladir the blacksmith of Ankerath
• Exploding dodge now shows that the skill is actually scaling with your projectile damage
• Random starting skills have been replaced with static skill selection to ensure a balanced distribution of skill variety.

Balancing

• Increased default endurance and energy regeneration on fresh run to 1.5/s (was 1.0/s)
• Max endurance and max energy skill nodes now increase your max resources by +2 (was +1)
• Increased endurance and energy regeneration now increase your regeneration by +100% (was +60%)
• Increased companon damage skill nodes now decrease your endurance and energy regeneration by -30% (was -25% attack speed and -15% dodge regeneration)
• Increased condition damage skill nodes now decrease your endurance and energy regeneration by -30% (was -15% attack speed and -20% endurance and -20 energy regeneration)
• Reduced frenzy exp bonus and rebalanced frenzy time limit scaling for high frenzy stacks
• Trembling ground now has -50% attack speed
• Increased melee damage has been decreased to +70% (was 80%)
• Constructs have been removed from the legendary effect pool.
• Enemy HP scaling has been increased for the endgame.

Bugfixes

• Plenty of smaller bugfixes

Known issues

Since this is the largest update we ever did on one of our games with many fundamental changes we are aware that there might be a bit more bugs introduced as on the usual updates. So we recommend going to gown as often as possible so that your run gets saved on a regular basis in case you encounter crashes. Backing up the save files now and then is also never a bad idea.

We wish everyone a lot of fun with this new update and the new early access season 8. See you in the leaderboards!

If you encounter any bugs or issues please let us know. The best way to engage in the ongoing development of Striving for Light is our discord:

Join our official discord!