Halls of Torment Update 2023-09-21 Patch Notes

Halls of Torment is the next rogue-lite hit after Vampire Survivors, despite still being in Early Access. Chasing Carrots performs regular updates of the game, keeping it populated with new content, and is very adamant about keeping the game bug-free. The September 21, 2023 patch notes brought us a variety of features, UI updates, balances, bug fixes, and many more, about which you will be able to inform yourself below. Here are the patch notes for the Halls of Torment Sept 21 Update.

Hello Adventurers! In this new patch, we’ve tackled a couple of problems with the way information about your character was displayed in the UI. The way we’ve gathered attribute data until now was rather basic and limited. That also applied to how the data was converted into readable format. We’ve done another refactoring pass in that system and added more information to every (or at least most) entity that exposes attributes to the stats display. We hope that this will bring some more clarity, for example when it comes to figuring out what effect the “Force” stat has on different Abilities.

Another important addition is the new profile management UI. You can access it from the main menu while being at the campfire. We’ve received numerous reports of players losing their entire progress and we were not able to pinpoint the problem. Our best guess is that under certain conditions there is a failure during cloud synchronization.

That’s why from now on the game will make a daily backup of your current profile (stored in separate files). All those backups are shown in a list in the profile tab of the main menu. In this menu you will be able to delete particular backups or restore them as your current profile. Your current progress is shown at the very top of that view. This is also where you can reset your profile, in case you want a fresh start. Don’t worry, we have a confirmation dialog in place that ensures you won’t erase your profile unless you really want to.

Those are the two biggest topics of this patch. There have been a lot more changes, predominantly bug fixes, that are listed below:

Halls of Torment Change Log | 2023-09-21

Features

• Refactored display of stats in character sheet and “Traits & Abilities” section
  • stats are displayed in a more dynamic manner: weapons and items are displayed in separate categories
  • Most stats of abilities are now displayed properly
  • Stat labels are more context-sensitive, e.g. it is shown which attributes are affected by Force
  • (Some stats might still be missing and should be added later on)
• Profile containing game progress is backed up once a day
  
• Added profile management menu which allows you to:
  • Browse and restore profile backups
  • Reset your current progress (if you want a fresh start)

UI

• Names of ability upgrades are listed in ability tooltips
• upgraded abilities are marked with chevrons in the HUD

Tome of Mastery

• allows you to pick any ability from the pool of all available abilities
• replaces initial ability scrolls in all stages

Balancing

• further reduced agony score ceiling in Frozen Depths so Agony V is achievable

Visibility

• improved contrast of bright purple enemy projectiles against bright backgrounds
• increased sprite contrast of red and blue burning skull monsters

Bugfixes

• Fixed “get xp while closing” exploit in chest UI.
• Fixed input issue caused when first time selecting a character using the keyboard.
• Fixed a bug that would give all enemies a 100% damage buff.
• Fixed a bug with modifier categories that caused modifiers to affect abilities they shouldn’t apply to.
• Flame Strike “heatup” traits applied burn chance modifiers the wrong way.
• Kugelblitz crit chance traits now affect the lightning from the High Voltage upgrade.
• Frost affinity corrected text “frost damage” to “ice damage”.
• changed frost avalanche “attraction” traits pushback force from -20 to -30.
• Fixed a bug that caused ballistic bullets to fly way too fast.
• Fixed a bug that caused electrified orb damage not being updated on movement speed changes.
• Shieldmaiden’s “stalwart dedication” now restores health when max health is increased.

Prelude savegame import

• Fixed prelude savegame format so import function in full game works again.
• (Start the prelude once to update the savegame before importing)

What’s Next? With the overall improvements in convenience throughout the past few patches, we are planning to slowly transition into more content-based updates. We’re still seeing some room for improvement in different areas, but we think it’s also important to continuously extend the playable content and introduce new things that make the game actually fun. With that said, don’t expect a huge content update just yet. We will add a few smaller things first, before moving on to bigger and more varied chunks of content.

So long! 🥕
– Chasing Carrots

If you are new to HoT, check out Halls of Torment tips and tricks for beginners.