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Rogue Legacy 2 v0.3.0 Arcane Hollows update patch notes add Stygian Study biome

The Arcane Hallows v0.3.0 update has rolled out to Rogue Legacy 2, here's what's new.

Donovan Erskine

February 18, 2021 4:40 PM

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Rogue Legacy 2 launched in 2020, bringing fans more exciting metroidvania action. Since its release, developer Cellar Door Games has continued to supply the game with new content and updates. Now, the studio has released update v0.3.0. Nicknamed Arcane Hallows, this patch adds new characters and locations for players to explore, as well as some standard fixes.

Rogue Legacy 2 Arcane Hallows Update v0.3.0 patch notes

The full list of patch notes was shared on the Rogue Legacy 2 website. Cellar Door Games also released a new video that highlights some of the biggest additions in the Arcane Hallows update. Here is the full list of patch notes for Rogue Legacy 2 v0.3.0:

Game updates

Broader Horizons – With the release of the Arcane Hallows Update comes the Stygian Study, the fourth biome in the world of Rogue Legacy 2. While this matches RL2’s content to the size of the original, we’re not stopping there. The Study is the beating heart of the kingdom, acting as the epicentre of research and progress. Within its faulted halls lies a domain full of mystic illusion and wizardry, and not everything is as it seems.

Players who prefer a more open experience will be glad to know that the Stygian Study can be entered out-of-sequence. This means it can be explored at any time – just be sure you’re equipped to handle what it has in store.

New Challengers Have Arrived – Two new classes will be lending their talents to conquer this shape-shifting world - the Gunslinger and the Assassin. The Gunslinger is our wildest class yet. Get into the thick of and unleash a rapid volley of bullets that turn your foes into Swiss cheese. Meanwhile, the Assassin is a vintage class that is high-powered yet fragile. Weave in and out of danger with your cloaking ability, while doling out enormous damage with a rapid three-strike attack.

Architect – As the world expands, so too does the complexity of conquering it. To help address this, we are bringing back the crackpot Architect. Those familiar with Rogue Legacy will recall that this loony character can lock down your previous world to play over again. Practice against bosses, take a second crack at Fairy Room Challenges, or just go for 100% map clearance. The Architect grants the ability to try, try again, but remember, crazy doesn’t come free. This time around his fees increase with every attempt in a locked world.

Curio Shoppes – Players can now randomly encounter Curio Shoppes when traversing the world. These shops give players an opportunity to try a different set of skills for their hero. Swap your weapon, your spell, and even your talent to become a master of all. Those who are adventurous will also be rewarded with bonus stats. These shops are hugely experimental so they might be available only for a limited time.

Hubba Hubba Hub – The Docks are getting a slight facelift so that there is more space to stretch your legs. Things have been feeling a little claustrophobic ever since the Architect showed up, so the starting area is expanding upward and outward. This will give the characters that have already settled there more room to breathe.

Difficulty Rebalance – When it comes to game balance, we generally veer towards the more difficult side of things. For Early Access we tried to make RL2 not as hard as a previous games, but it’s still super hard. We’ve done a big pass on overall difficulty and made things generally easier, while making some more bespoke changes to certain trouble areas, like Heirloom Challenges. In conjunction with characters like the Architect, whom intrinsically reduce the difficulty, we may have swung too far in the other direction. As always, we’d love to hear your feedback.

Fairy Room Challenge Triggers – This addition came in last-minute, but it is a fairy-ly large change to how Fairy Room Challenges have worked from the original. Rather than blindsiding players with a surprising challenge the moment they enter a Fairy Room, there is now a lever that must be pulled before the action starts. This should address issues where players would jump in a no-jump challenge and fail before even noticing, or where a timer-would-suddenly-appear-and-you-have-to-go-go-go!

Armor Redesign – One of the most important (and unspoken) rules of Game Design is that “Numbers Should Always Go Up”. While we were happy with our Armor System (it did what we wanted it to do, which helped boost weak classes more than strong classes and made early game consistently impactful), it was demoralizing to a large user base. We rehauled the algorithm entirely so that armor goes up, and rarely goes down. Now your armor blocks a flat amount of damage (up to a maximum). This will make early game more inconsequential, but we have future changes in store to resolve this. This is another one that’s marked down as “highly experimental”.

Relics Rehaul

Resolve System – Relics have always been low-key overpowered, but most people avoided them due to their drastic costs on maximum health. Players should not feel obligated to use them nor should they feel out-of-reach – we want relics to always be a choice. We’ve made a few smaller changes to help, but ultimately decided a bigger solution was in order. With this update, the usage of relics now cost Resolve.

Resolve is a new stat that lowers with each equipped relic. If your resolve drops below 100%, you will lose maximum health by an equivalent amount. However, resolve can also go above 100%, and it can be modified based on things such as what kind of equipment you’re wearing, what runes or traits you have, and so on. This adds more fidelity when choosing relics, since players can now build themselves in a way that reduces those inhibitive costs (or vice versa).

Twin Relics – Relics are a great way to add variety in the middle of a run. So to help speed this up, Relics found in the world can now have ‘twin’ modifiers on them, which doubles up how many you get. Of course, along with twice the advantage comes twice the resolve cost.

Relic Additions and Changes – We’ve got the data, and we know what relics people like and which ones are avoided. It’s a tough balancing act, but we want each relic to be an interesting choice for the player. That means no must-haves and must-avoids, so we’ve gone back and tweaked a bunch of relics (along with adding more than a dozen new ones). For a list of all relic changes, check out the bullet points at the end of these notes.

Encumbrance Update – Making a higher encumbrance reduce mana gain worked pretty well, but we felt it could be better. A lot of people did not bother to manage their equipment weight and simply stopped casting spells if encumbrance prohibited them. We’ve changed things so that encumbrance now reduces resolve instead of mana gain. Since resolve is a stat players can manipulate in other ways, this provides more control over how much encumbrance affects your playstyle.

Class rebalance #2

The Far Shores content patch gave us our first look at the power balance between classes. Clearly some are doing too well (Barbarian, Valkyrie, Chef), while others have been struggling (Mage and Duelist). Some tweaks have been made to get them closer to an equilibrium.

Knight – Regular blocks now ALWAYS reduce damage by 50%. Perfect blocks ALWAYS reduce damage by 100%.

Ranger – Ivy Platform is now Ivy Canopy. The talent now has a longer duration, a larger platform, and blocks small projectiles. Cooldown also resets over time.

Barbarian – Given more health but lowered damage on ground strike and spin attack. Can now dash while doing an air attack.

Mage – Class now has more health and their attack causes a bigger explosion. Mages are also incidentally more powerful due to the massive buff to spells overall.

Valkyrie – Increased the hitbox on the height of their swings, sped up their attack speed, and given more health. Damage down and Spin Talent duration reduced slightly. Their Spin talent can now also only counter small projectiles.

Chef – Was far too reliable and caused many other classes to be ignored. Grabbing meat no longer restores health unless the player has max stats of their talent, and the frying pan can now only deflect small projectiles.

Duelist – Is hidden OP but still no one is using them. Wording of the class description changed to clarify how this hero is expected to be played. Health has gone up and so has attack damage. Attack collision radius massively increased and attack speed has been raised. Also added a bunch of quality-of-life control tweaks so that ground combos can now be easily performed.

As well, one BIG change made to all classes in the early-game is the ability to dash while on the ground right from the beginning. This means it no longer needs to be obtained through an heirloom. This added mobility should hopefully reduce immediate frustrations with slower classes like the Barbarian.

That’s everything new in Rogue Legacy update v.0.3.0 Arcane Hallows. For more on Rogue Legacy 2, stick with us here on Shacknews.

Donovan Erskine

News Editor

Donovan is a journalist from Maryland. His oldest gaming memory is playing Pajama Sam on his mom's desktop during weekends. Pokémon Emerald, Halo 2, and the original Star Wars Battlefront 2 were some of the most influential titles in awakening his love for video games. After interning for Shacknews throughout college, Donovan graduated from Bowie State University in 2020 with a major in broadcast journalism and joined the team full-time. He is a huge film fanatic and will talk with you about movies and games all day. You can follow him on twitter @Donimals_