One of our favorite games of 2024, Halls of Torment, has announced a sizable update today, adding new items, artifacts, balancing adjustments, and numerous quality-of-life features to the survivor-like. It’s the start of the game’s post-1.0 updates, and the team at Chasing Carrots, which we interviewed for the game’s launch, has confirmed it’ll bring more and bigger updates later this year. There will be two parts to these updates: the first will be free updates that introduce smaller features and improvements, while the second will feature larger paid DLCs with new maps, characters, abilities, and features.
Today’s first update adds the possibility to upgrade abilities a third time, four new item types, and six new artifacts. The game has been balanced to enable more playstyles at higher torment levels, while quality-of-life changes include a DPS meter, pickup range indicator, VSync option, and more character stats. There are also a few dozen bug fixes, along with stability and performance improvements and changes.
For Steam users, new community items, including animated backgrounds and profile images, have been added to the Steam Points Shop. Lastly, the team has added Vietnamese and Traditional Chinese localizations to the game.
Halls of Torment has also added a Supporter Bundle DLC that costs $6.28 if you already own the game. It contains only cosmetics and the Training Grounds and doesn’t provide any advantage in the game. This includes alternative character skins for each of the 1.0 characters, additional HUD themes, and a soundtrack with eight songs totaling a playtime of 49 minutes.
When Halls of Torment originally entered Early Access, it was one of our favorite games of the year in 2023. It launched into 1.0 last year, and you can read our review here.
Quality of Life:
- The pickup range now be made visible from the option menu.
- It is possible to enable a live DPS meter during runs.
- “Chambers of Dissonance” now have markers hinting the Dissonator configuration.
- Archeologists Shrine is now transported next to the player after defeating the lord of a stage.
- Player Stats now show things Burn, Spark and Frost Damage and other utility values.
Items:
- Added “Demonic Grasp” Item that summons hands following you, grabbing enemies and loot.
- “Demonic Grasp” is unlocked by finishing the quest “Observer” from the Warlock.
- Adding “Beastmaster’s Hide” that summons strong Ice Elemental Beast that attack enemies and despawn after they have taken a certain amount of damage. Their stats scale with the player.
- The quest “Trained Beast Huntress” will now unlock “Beastmaster’s Hide”.
- Adding “Elemental Capacitor” amulet that applies “Damage” Bonus to Elemental Effects.
- The quest “Dissonance Speedster” unlocks the new amulet “Elemental Capacitor”
- Adding “Ability Signets” which do only exist as uncommon variants. They unlock for the ability they are for the option of a 3rd upgrade. Those rings can’t be unequipped once put on.
- The quest to collect 20 Artifacts in total unlocking the Ability Signets.
Artifacts:
- Added “Hardening Targe” – Increasing the Block Strength of monsters by 2 for every player level.
- Added “Elemental Incubator” – Decreasing Elemental Chance and increasing the Elemental Damage.
- Added “Totem of Giants” – Makes enemies tougher and bigger but reduces the numbers slightly.
- Added “Demonic Accolade” – 1% of enemies become special and give the chance to drop extra gold, power ups etc.
- Added “Dementing Root” – Reducing the max. Abilities to 4 and reducing Multistrike by 30%.
- Added “Pale Goblet” – Area and Range upgrades reduce the chance for effects and critical hits.
Changes:
- Option menu rework to give room for more settings.
- Added A VSync Setting into the Options.
- Artifact “Mountain Idol” is now a random artifact drop.
- Artifact “Torment Banner” now drops from the Viaduct instead of Frozen Depths.
- Artifact “Malignant Mirror” is now a fixed drop in the Frozen Depths.
- Expanded on “Maiden’s Tear” descriptions to make the difference between versions more clear.
- Gatherer’s Amulets have been changed, so that it is more clear that not a random potion is filled up but each potion is filled up after a certain amount of triggers. The tooltip of the item in the HUD will let players know what’s next.
- When the Sage is equipping the Sage Mark, it allows him to pick a 3rd ability upgrade for his main ability.
Defense / Block Balancing:
- Reduced all sources of base Block/Defense by roughly 50%.
- Relative amounts remain mainly unchanged.
- Reducing the base damage of all damage source by 10-20%.
- Reducing Damage and Movement Speed increase from Torment Levels.
- This change has been implemented to allow for a higher variety of play styles with many artifacts active at the same time. The result will be observed and we might adjust spending on the feedback during the experimental phase.
Balancing:
- Increasing Base Damage of Burn, Spark and Frost by 20%
- Reducing the requirement for the quest “Vault Survivor III” from 60 to 45 minutes.
- Reducing the requirement for the quest “Experience Horde” from level 150 to 140.
- Lord of Greed (the Vault) HP now does scale with time, decreased the base HP
- Increased the HP and Defense of the Vault Towers protecting the lord.
- Reduced the Health Bonus for lords from Torment Levels.
- Increased the base drop chance for random Artifacts (40% -> 60%), but reduced the bonus for unowned ones. (4% -> 1.5%)
- Master’s Vice now reduces Base Health by 1 instead of 0.8%.
- Face of Regret now reduces Force and Attack Speed by 0.2% per 100 enemies defeated instead of Damage by 0.5%
- Flagellant’s Footcuff will reduce movement speed now after 20 instead of 10 meters moved.
- Reduced the strength of each Stack in player.
- Burning Hands will now have a different Burn effect for the player with slower and longer burn.
- Golden Scarab now deals more damage when the player receives gold.
- Reduced the movement debuff from “Burdening Stone” per item from 8% to 4%.
- Increased Fallen Star Spawns, reduced damage to players and increased damage to enemies.
- Magma Vessel has a bigger damage area but slower spawn speed and decreased damage.
- Fallen Star and Magma Vessel damage are no longer blockable.
- Slow effect will less drastically stack.
- All projectiles are now either only affected by Duration (Force) or Launch Velocity (Range).
- Adjusted traits of Dragon’s Breath, Kugelblitz and Ringblades accordingly.
- Kugelblitz is no longer affected by Movement Speed.
- Arcane Rift will now explode with 50% damage if not triggered by the player.
- Wandering Rift Upgrade no longer reduces the Area of Arcane Rifts.
- Hailstorms will now automatically drop after a certain time.
- Increased Damage of Frost Avalanche from 50 to 100.
- Increased Frost Chance of Frost Avalanche from 10% to 15%.
- Reduce Attack Speed of Frost Avalanche from 0.25/s to 0.20/s.
- Increased the XP gain from Sage traits. I 3% -> 5%, II 5% -> 8%, III 7% -> 12%, IV 10% -> 16%
- Reduced the drop chance for ability scrolls and tomes from champions.
- Reduced the requirement for Dissonant Slayer Quests (20%) and Army of the Dead. (66600 -> 50666)
- Reducing the Health/Defense increase for monsters from each Torment Level as we have more Artifacts now.
- Jade Amulett now gives more XP for collected gold.
Other Changes:
- Improved performance from monster spawns.
- Reduced GPU memory usage.
- Optimized elemental effects.
- Improved Stability.
- Updated the Engine Version.
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug where monsters’ movement speed increase over time was reversed.
- Projectiles would not get bonus from ability/type specific buffs. (e.g. Ringblades from “Reach”)
- Coverage (Swordsman Trait) now giving a proper Range bonus, was giving Attack Speed instead.
- Coverage (Swordsman Trait) stated it would give 15% but only 10%.
- Slow chance bonus would not apply to the “Spiked Chain” upgrade of Morning Star.
- Keybinding wouldn’t save when changing manually back to the default keys.
- Quest “Untouchable III” was named “Untouchable II”
- Quest “Sparking Eye” did not clarify that the goal has to be reached within a single run.
- Quest reward of “Pacifist” was falsely noted to be “Weapon Proficiency V” instead of “Dedication V”
- Norseman’s Dedication had a wrong description stating it would increase Frost Damage by 10% instead of 30%.
- Quest “Death By Electrucution” stated the wrong reward “Weapon Proficiency V” instead of “Proficient Stance V”
- Quest “Cleric Stand’s II” had the wrong reward listed, it should be 4000 gold instead of the trait “False Blessing”
- Fixed a bug where the scaling of movement speed for monsters was reversed. So they started faster than they should be and became slower over time.
- Fixed a bug where the first 5 torment level increases in the vault would all happen at once.
- Swordsman selection showed that he should have 65% Crit Chance instead of 200%.
- Broker’s Cape rare variants had the same stats as the uncommon version.
- Traits of Spectral Fist had the wrong numbers in the frame.
- Beast Huntress would not get her advertised Movement Speed bonus on level up.
- Rare Berserker Boost would give less Attack Speed Bonus than they should.
- Fixed that Electrified Orbs upgrade would not grant damage bonus for negative speed.
- Dissonance Beserker Quests could be done on any map.
- Elven Slippers boosts no longer depend on the frame rate.
- Reverberant Bottle was falsely named.
- Fixed an issue that made Dragon’s Breath stop emitting.
- Catching a case where certain timed quests would not properly be completed in the last minute of a run.
- The rare Bloodsoaked Shirt had the same stats as the uncommon ones.
- Rare Speedcaster Gloves were the same as the uncommon ones.
- The artifact “Hiltless Dagger” stat changes would not appear in the modifier list.
- Quests that require damage dealt no longer account for overkill damage to be on par with the end screen damage result.
- Values of rare and uncommon Firewalker Boots were swapped.
- Fixed the description of Pest Rings that had been the same.
- Fixed a navigation issue of rat summons.
- Magmafist Upgrade for the Golems would reduce roll cooldown instead of increasing Attack Speed.
