Wildkeepers Rising news & patch notes

• Fix for "Free Frostpyre Peak" achievement

Greetings Wildkeepers,

It's finally here! Wildkeepers Rising 1.0 is LIVE!

Today is a HUGE day for us. This is the result of two years of hard work. Lyle and I have put everything we've got into Wildkeepers Rising, investing our time and our money trying to make the best possible game. It's been a relentlessly difficult, but also incredibly rewarding journey. But enough about us, what do you get from this release?

Wildkeepers 1.0

We've really tried to push the bullet heaven genre forward in Wildkeepers Rising with the addition of Guardians and Sigils. Our goal was to provide enough variety (in both gameplay and visuals) to enable you to play however you wanted and develop favorite builds, but also to challenge you to make it work with what you've got.

We've added a lot of content to this game:

• 5 fully playable Wildkeepers

• 29 Guardians, each with individual personalities, upgrades, supers and play styles

• 4 large environments, with unique layouts

• 65 different enemies, with distinct behaviors

• 4 tremendous bosses

• 50 Sigils, serving either as weapons, passives or game-changers

• 77 pieces of upgradeable and equippable Gear, which create a ridiculous amount of combinations

All of this content serves as the foundation to create infinite possibilities and unique situations during gameplay. At the same time, we never intended for this to be a game where you're grinding for hours, playing the same content over and over, just to get 1% stronger, or to unlock a reskin of a character. Every enemy, every Sigil, every Guardian is designed to increase the amount of variety, to show you something you haven't seen yet. And after 15-20 hours, if you've completed all the content and you're satisfied, so are we.

If you want more details about the changes between 1.0 and 0.4, I wrote about it here:

Launch Discount

We made the decision to maintain the Early Access price of $9.99 USD (regional prices may vary) because we wanted to make the game as accessible as possible to as many players as possible.

Besides this, we're also launching with a 10% discount for 7 days.

This truly is the best time to get Wildkeepers Rising:

Coming Soon

Steam has always been our primary platform, because of its flexibility, and the ability to connect with a knowledgeable audience full of discerning players like you.

We will continue to have a strong presence here. Wildkeepers Rising is currently participating in the Roguelike Celebration (check them out here and here, it's really cool). And we're also going to be a part of the upcoming Bullet Heaven Fest 3.0 (Dec 4th) which I'm sure will be full of great games you'll enjoy if you like Wildkeepers Rising.

But beyond Steam, we're also proud to be able to offer the game to audiences on console. We're in the process of getting everything finalized, but can announce that Wildkeepers Rising is coming to console (Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series S|X) on November 12th.

We're looking forward to all of you playing Wildkeepers Rising, and we'd love to hear about it. Please leave us a comment in the Steam Forums or join our Discord (I respond personally to all questions and comments). We hope to see you there.

Sergio.

Greetings Wildkeepers,

Today is a big day. After a long three and a half months of work, we're finally ready to announce that Wildkeepers Rising is very close to full release.

We've prepared this trailer to celebrate the occasion. I hope you like it:

As you can see in the trailer, Wildkeepers Rising will go 1.0 on October 23rd. That's a bit over a week away!

We will have a launch discount of 10% and Steam has a 30-day cooldown after that when we're not allowed to discount the game, so make sure you pick it up that week!

Before I give you details on what's in this release (hint: it's a BIG one), I thought it would be good to reflect a bit on our Early Access journey, and how you've helped made Wildkeepers Rising a better game.

The Road So Far

From the beginning, our intention was to advance the bullet heaven genre with innovative gameplay. Besides covering the basics with a large variety of upgrades and enemies, we added many ingredients to the formula, such as autonomous Guardians, large and complex maps, custom missions, equippable powers (Sigils) and a bit of narrative.

Both the most successful and the one we feel most passionate about is the Guardians. We worked hard to provide a large collection of creature looks as well as gameplay styles and personalities, so playing with the Guardians would feel unique and rewarding.

A big emphasis during Early Access has been to reinforce the meta-game. We added a brand new mission type, Endless Mode, that removes the power cap and allows you to grow super-strong - but only if you can master the ever increasing challenge from the enemies. And in our latest release we also added gear, providing an incredible amount of possible configurations for your characters, and many choices on how to invest your hard-earned meta-currency.

What's New in 1.0

The Early Access release shipped with three full environments, each with five new Guardians to unlock and a new Wildkeeper (the Chief and Milo), plus 10+ different enemy types and a boss. We've been consistently hearing from streamers and players that the game is much bigger than they expected, and we're very proud of having accomplished that (there's only two of us!)

In 1.0 we've added a full new environment: Frostpyre Peak. Half lava volcano, half frozen mountain, the enemies there will either freeze you or make you catch fire, so you'll have to be extra careful. As before, there are five new Guardians to unlock and you'll get a new Wildkeeper (Ivy) at the beginning. Plus you'll end up playing the biggest and hardest boss fights we've ever designed!

I won't spoil the surprise for what the new Guardians are, but they're pretty crazy! (you may spot some of them in the new trailer above...)

Besides the new environment, we've continued to polish, adjust balance and fix bugs. Here's a more comprehensive list:

• Massive performance improvements to both CPU and GPU. Framerate is faster and more stable and ever before, reaching a solid 60fps on a Steam Deck.

• Fix bug that was causing the game to save more frequently than necessary, causing performance issues.

• Polish the look of the Map Screen. Now you can see the Guardians and the bosses associated to the missions.

• You can now have 3 different save slots, no need to lose your progress if you want to start from the beginning.

• Manual Attacks have been disabled. We felt this feature was not adding to the game, as it's best played in auto-attack mode.

• Fix bug with enhancing Team Upgrades

• New Achievements!

• Buff some sigils, including Landminer, Dragon's Breath, Toxic Trail and Floating Wither, that were underpowered. Nerf others, including Vampire

• And some Guardian tweaks:

  • Kifoo will now track the damage done by hypnotized enemies and update his DPS.

  • Wally's super is now limited to an area (depending on his aggro).

  • Reeza now has a separate indicator for hatchlings and eggs.

  • Volcoy's gauge for calling a pack member can go to 3 - numbers changed to roman numerals

  • Increase the value for freeze upgrades

• Many other little polish items, bug fixes and balance tweaks

And One More Thing...

We couldn't be more excited to reach this point with all of you, after a long but rewarding journey.

But a lot of the work that we did to improve performance and fix a lot of the bugs has also allowed us to prepare console ports. They are currently in certification and we hope to release them as soon as they are ready, so if you prefer to play Wildkeepers Rising on console you'll be able to do that very soon.

In the meantime, let us know on Discord what you think of this release. We hope to see you there!

Sergio

• Fix exploit holding an upgrade and selecting would let you get it twice
• Save file from previous version is backed up
• Fix bug that was causing the game to save too frequently

• Fix for Achievements not triggering correctly on Steam

Greetings Wildkeepers,

Welcome to 0.4. I know it's been a while since the last update, but that's only because this is by far the biggest update we've shipped yet!

Gear Up

The main star of this update, as promised in the roadmap, is the introduction of Gear.

Here's how it works.

As you play missions, you'll collect pieces of gear. Those are permanent, so you keep them after the mission is over. In the village, you can examine your gear, upgrade it and equip it to both Wildkeepers and Guardians.

Each piece of gear can be equipped to every Wildkeeper and every Guardian simultaneously, so nobody is going to miss out.

Gear pieces fit in a single slot, either a helmet, a chest slot, boots, a weapon, ring, necklace, or even some food, a book, a potion and a trinket. Wildkeepers and Guardians have different slots.

Gear combines with the previous Meta-Upgrades system to provide you with more choices than ever to strengthen your team as you progress through the game. Most gear pieces can be made stronger by upgrading them with the appropriate currency. Where will you spend it?

At this time, there are a total of 76 different pieces of gear, each with its own functionality.

And if you've been playing a while and worry about having to go back and farm for gear, worry not. The game will award you some gear when you open 0.4 based on your existing progress, so you're all ready to go!

Quality of Life

Working on Gear, we've had to play the game a lot to make sure it feels fun and balanced, and that has also led to the introduction of a few Quality of Life and polish updates:

• Difficulty selection is now presented upfront, and all difficulties are unlocked from the start. You get to decide what level of challenge is right for you.

• In spite of adding power with the introduction of gear, the first two difficulty levels remain almost unchanged, but we've made Ridiculous and Ludicrous difficulties even harder, and levelling up will also be slower.

• The tutorial for using Supers has been updated, to ensure nobody misses it

• Upgrades (both individual and team upgrades) can be enhanced, increasing their rarity. You can get enhancements by equipping the right gear.

• DPS numbers no longer include the damage dealt by Sigils, now it's only direct damage by the Wildkeeper or Guardian. You can still see Sigil damage in the tooltip for each weapon Sigil.

• Wildkeepers will grunt when hurt, so it's easier to tell when you're taking damage.

• The icons in the minimap are bigger and sorted properly, so they're easier to see.

• Guardian icons in the minimap look red when the Guardian is fainted.

• We improved gamepad controls a lot:

  • A visual cursor is now drawn over buttons and other UI elements, making it clear what the selection is

  • Added acceleration when using the analog stick to move the cursor

  • Button prompts are presented contextually right next to the UI element they affect, besides also appearing in the bottom right of the screen

• Polished the UI with the introduction of stat icons, making it more visual

• Guardians in the inventory will look red when fainted, and you'll be able to see the revive timer.

• The map screen can be scrolled by dragging with any mouse button (besides moving the cursor to the edges)

• Infested Mounds will no longer show up as an objective arrow unless they are, in fact, a mission objective.

• The Infested Mounds mission has been moved to the right side of the bridge. It's better for players to focus on releasing Guardians at the beginning, and now the mounds can be anywhere in the level.

• Wildkeeper collision is now disabled while dashing

And a few balance changes:

• Buff Kerpi:

  • He received 20 block, to make him more durable

  • His ball drops a heart on every bounce when thrown

• Nipper's revive upgrade has been made stronger

• Kiraboom will no longer try to pick up hearts

• Grampth will stay a bit closer to you

• Devouring Tree's health has been cut in half

• The Sacrifice Sigil has been nerfed to only absorb 50% of the damage

Some Technical Stuff

Up until now, we had been running on version 5.4.4 of Unreal Engine. It was time for an update, and we upgraded it to the very latest version 5.6, released just a few short weeks ago.

This version should introduce bug fixes and performance improvements, and make it easier to port the game to console as we approach full release.

Another change we decided to implement is to go back to using DirectX11 for rendering. While DX12 offers an opportunity for better performance in some cases, this is mostly true if you use all the latest features in Unreal (Nanite and Lumen), which we don't really need for this game - and which would negatively impact the overall framerate, especially on older hardware.

With the rollback to DirectX11 we also hope to remove hitches due to PSO caching which, even with the mitigation approaches provided by Unreal Engine, seemed to be causing problems for some players.

As with any technical changes, there's always risk something can go wrong, so let us know in our Discord if you encounter any issues.

And with this, we're deep into the next update, which we expect to be even BIGGER than this one, if you can believe it. Which is why it might take a while, but until then we hope you have a chance to experiment with gear and put together some crazy powerful combinations. I know we have.

Sergio.

Endless Mode

• Monsters get stronger over time, receiving periodic upgrades to both their health and damage.
• After a warm up period of 3 minutes, you play a 10 minute run, then fight the boss, and the cycle repeats, indefinitely.
• The max level cap of 10 is gone, you can continue to level up and upgrade your Wildkeeper and your Guardians as much as you want. Keep in mind though that some specific upgrades do have limits.
• You can equip 3 sigils per character, so all of the sigils you collect (at levels 1, 5 and 10) can be equipped simultaneously.
• Chests also replenish after beating the boss, so you can keep piling up team upgrades.

• Freeze chance is lower
• Stun and hypnosis duration is also lower

Accessibility

• Camera shake can now be completely disabled.
• White Guardian outlines can be enabled to make it easier to keep track of your Guardians
• Monsters flash white when hit - this can be toned down or disabled.
• The screen also flashes red when the player receives damage - you can control the intensity now.
• The big one is all the visual effects: explosions, beams, magic indicators, etc. We spent a lot of time adding controls so you can adjust the opacity to make them much fainter, improving the visibility of everything else. We didn't go as far as disabling them completely, because some of them are used to indicate critical information (like sigils auras) - this is something we may revisit in the future.

Others

• Double Super fills Volcoy to 1, instead of 3 (so you can wait a bit longer if you want a stronger pack member)
• Increased Wally's super cooldown from 15s to 24s
• Maximum area bonus increased from 100% to 150% for all Wildkeepers
• Ophelia's base damage reduced from 12 to 10, dash cooldown increased from 2s to 3s
• Ophelia's Critically Active crit chance reduced
• Double Super chance lowered from 50% to 25%
• Fix bosses taking advantage of meta-upgrades like Block and Dodge %
• Fix how aura's size bonuses are applied
• Fix Shiver's aggro max value
• Carn's damage increased from 30 to 35
• Fix Volcoy's pack count after teleporting to the boss

The Road to 0.4

Milo Ironjaw

Feedback Implemented

Slime Horror boss fight

Difficulty

Smack and Friends

Murkle

Others...

• Korin's Steady upgrade has been replaced with a simpler Attack Size upgrade, with no condition. This should help make him more powerful.
• The Sigil/Guardian selection screen had an exploit where if you clicked quickly to either Reroll or another option you would get both. No more.
• We implemented some fixes to the Simplified Chinese translations.
• The anonymous analytics package has been updated, to fix some issues. This will allow us to get some extra data that we'll use to further balance the game.
• The email checkbox in the Crash Handler is off by default now. Frankly, we saw someone complain about this but it's not even our doing - we're just using what comes with Unreal Engine, and we have no access to any email addresses, either through this or any other means.
• The combo box in the Settings menu can now scroll, so you should be able to select a Fullscreen resolution properly.

What's Next?

Thank You for the Feedback

• We wanted to make levelling up more exciting, adding more variety and opportunities for synergies (I should write a full post about synergies, as they are super important for this style of game, and hard to describe concisely)
• Sigils felt a bit too removed from the upgrade loop, as you had to find chests to collect them, but they add a lot of interactivity and decision making.
• The narrative wasn't successful creating the magical world we intended, and some of the dialogue was feeling flat.
• Honestly, the dash just sucked.

From Alpha to Beta

Show me the data

Mission Results

The Wildkeepers

The Guardians

Content Creators enjoy it too

Feedback and changes

• Level Up: Some of you mentioned that stat upgrades are not very interesting and we agree. We're reworking the Level Up system a bit to make it more varied, and incorporating Sigils in the mix to add more build possibilities and synergies.
• Story: Our goal is to create an immersive world, and we felt that having a bit of story helped make it seem more alive. We do agree that the cutscenes in the playtest didn't reach the quality that we wanted - part of that is they were missing lots of animations, which is why Ophelia is always pointing her bow at everyone! Moving forward we're going to re-evaluate what we can realistically deliver and we'll likely delay most of the story cutscenes until full release, as we don't think story is a good fit for iteration during Early Access.
• Dash: Yeah, the dash in this build doesn't feel great, and you don't really need it. We already knew that, and we're fixing it.
• Lots of other little things, like balance issues, missing polish, UI confusion and quality of life suggestions. This feedback is gold for us, we have a long list and we're checking it twice.

Alpha Playtest

• The build includes the first 2-3 hours of gameplay, all in the first environment. But you can progress all the way to the first boss!
• This is an alpha build, so content will be missing, and bugs will appear now and then. We still have a lot of work to do on this game.
• You can play with keyboard ⌨️ and mouse🖱️, but the game has full support for controllers 🎮
• We will be resetting the saves before the game comes out, so you won't be able to keep your progress.

Coming Soon

• It will open at the same time as the Bullet Heaven Fest, from December 4th to December 11th.
• You'll get access to everything in the first 2-3 hours of the game, up to and including the first boss fight.
• This will be an alpha build, so a bunch of content will be missing, and you can expect to encounter some bugs now and then.
• Your save will be reset by the time the game comes out, so you won't be able to keep any progress from the Playtest build.