Its ×0.5 damage penalty now applies only to projectile damage: melee, chopping and mining are no longer affected.
Rain of Points, Scattered Steel, Handful of Iron
Changed
Their ×0.75 damage penalty now applies only to projectile damage.
Shutter Click
Changed
Its instant action chance now reads as what it is: a chance to reload instantly.
Texts
Impact Detonation
Changed
The six Impact Detonation options now say it plainly: every ricochet explosion deals full power.
Crossbows
Hail of Iron
New
New keystone: ×2 loaded bolts, ×1.3 crossbow fire rate and ×0.4 crossbow damage.
Winding Tumble
New
New crossbow mastery: dodging discards the remaining loaded charges and starts a normal reload, with reload modifiers and instant-reload chance. Inventory bolts are not lost.
Bolt in the Gap
New
Added 40% increased critical strike chance with the first shot of a crossbow magazine.
Helm on a Spit
New
Added 40% increased critical strike damage with the last loaded crossbow shot.
Siege Reserve
New
Added 5% increased crossbow damage per bolt fired in the past 3 seconds.
The Winder’s Hand
New
Added 15% increased crossbow fire rate after dodging recently.
Crossbow fire rate
New
Added two unconditional crossbow fire-rate clusters in the Strength–Dexterity sector.
Seven small passives grant 2% increased fire rate each; Iron Cadence and Hailstring grant 5% each.
Combat and equipment
Damage
Bow and crossbow shots
Changed
A bow or crossbow shot is now two parts. Projectile damage raises only the arrow or bolt, bow and crossbow damage raises only the weapon itself, and everything else raises the whole shot. Spells and thrown weapons have no separate ammunition and work as before.
Thrown weapons
Thrown clubs, maces and sledges
New
A thrown club, mace or sledge now slams where it strikes the ground, hitting everything around with the weapon's damage. Slam and area modifiers apply.
With bounces the weapon bounces on and slams again on every landing.
Thrown sceptres
New
A thrown sceptre casts its own spell every time it strikes the ground. The Sceptre of the Pious calls a Smite there; with bounces, one on every landing.
Sigils
Replacing a sigil
Changed
A sigil can now be set into a socket that already holds one: the old sigil shatters - its pieces fly apart with a crack of breaking crystal - and the new one takes its place. The old sigil is lost.
Crossbows
Crossbow magazine
New
Crossbows have a magazine: additional projectiles become loaded bolts, filled when a reload finishes. The additional projectile chance is rolled at that moment. Each shot fires one bolt.
Holding attack keeps firing loaded bolts at the crossbow's fire rate. Each crossbow's base fire rate comes from its own base reload time (a 3.5 s reload gives about one shot per second); reload speed only affects reloading. At high fire rate the shot animation speeds up, so it never caps the fire rate.
A saved bolt keeps both the bolt in your bag and the loaded shot. Loaded shots stay with the crossbow when you unequip it; switching bolt type empties the magazine.
The extra-bolt burst (bolts fired 0.12 s apart) is removed.
Loaded shots are shown as ticks under the crosshair while a crossbow is in hand: one per shot, five and ×N above five. They glint when a bolt is saved. Crossbow tooltips show Loaded bolts and Fire rate.
New hotkey Reload weapon (default R, rebindable in the PoV hotkey settings): reloads the crossbow in hand even when its magazine is not empty, without putting it away. The remaining shots are dropped, no bolts are lost. Without a crossbow R works as Hide.
Ground effects
New look of ground effects
Changed
Burning, chilled, shocked and poisoned ground now look like the real thing: charred ground with glowing cracks and flames, a thin ice crust with crystals, flashing charged veins, a dark bubbling pool with toxic fog.
Each patch has its own pattern, its edge shows the real area from the first moment, and the nearest patches have their own light and sound.
World and exploration
Loot
Loot on higher difficulties
Changed
More creatures and more stars on higher difficulties no longer multiply Path of Valheiman loot: loot from creatures stays close to the Normal difficulty, also when the server raises star chances further. Bosses and chests are not affected.
Stars still add loot, but on difficulties where stars are more common each star adds a smaller share, so a high-star creature on Merciless gives about as much as half as many stars on Normal. This also applies to the extra vanilla materials from stars, and adjusts itself when the server changes creature density or star settings.
Damage type affixes
Changed
Fire, frost, lightning, poison, spirit, slashing, piercing and blunt damage affixes on weapons now add flat damage of that type to the weapon itself. Staves and sceptres can roll both the flat damage and a global increase of that type. Rings roll only global increases. Items you already have keep their affixes.
Creatures
Biome balance
Changed
Plains creatures have 20% more health.
Swamp creatures have 10% less health and damage.
Mountain creatures have 8% more health and damage.
Mistlands creature packs are 30% larger.
Bonemass and Yagluth
Changed
Bonemass and Yagluth have 20% more health.
Interface and usability
Weapons
Replaced alternative attacks
Changed
An alternative attack replaced by the tree (Ground Strike's slam, the summoning staves' sacrifice) now stays on the weapon for as long as you have its source, so the weapon's tooltip and its tags show the attack you will really make.
Node effects on weapons
New
The panel that shows how a hovered node changes your weapons now also shows each weapon's alternative attack when the node changes it - including a node that replaces the alternative attack.
Fixes
Combat
Damage calculation
Fixed
Fixed an error in the damage calculation: some increased damage modifiers of players and enemies entered the formula as multipliers. Now every increase adds into one sum, as it should, and no longer becomes a global multiplier.
Sigil of the Ashen Crown
Fixed
Its aura now really deals its share of the fire you take before your own reductions. Fire reaches you as burning ticks already lowered by your fire resistance, so the aura used to start from the small remainder - with Eternal Pyre it hit for almost nothing.
Weapon procs
Fixed
Chain Lightning and Immobilize procs now work on weapons picked up from the ground, without relogging.
Evasion stamina cost
Fixed
The existing evasion-cost nodes now affect the stamina paid for a passive evasion.
Interface
Tree icons
Fixed
Nodes of 19 themes showed no icon in 5.3.0: ground effects, infusion, damage over time, additional projectiles, chain, night, effect duration, onslaught, skill cooldown, speed and experience, spirit, swimming and torch. Their icons are back.
Tooltips and health numbers
Fixed
Item tooltips, numbers over enemy health bars and refill marks on the map no longer throw errors when they are built hidden.
Boss essences
Fixed
The essence tooltip now reads like a property: «Ascends an item to <biome>». Hover «Ascends» for the full rule.
Sceptre tooltip
Fixed
The sceptre tooltip now counts spell damage for the Smite's elemental damage, as the Smite itself always did.
Inventory replacement mods
Fixed
With mods that replace the inventory and crafting panels, closing the tree and opening the inventory no longer throw errors.
Absorption
Fixed
Absorption (absorbing ground effects) is now a hoverable term with its explanation.
Fists for Tools
Fixed
Restored the keystone’s existing icon in the game.
Giant’s Blow
Fixed
Restored the keystone’s existing icon in the game.
Rain of Arrows
Fixed
Restored the keystone’s existing icon in the game.
Distant Horizon
Fixed
The keystone now uses its own existing artwork.
Names and mechanic descriptions
Fixed
Completed translations of new passive names, crossbow properties, absorption, ascension and projectile descriptions in the official languages.
Stability
Leaving and rejoining a world
Fixed
Leaving a world and joining another without restarting the game no longer breaks experience from hits and kills, deaths, crystal growth and other combat bookkeeping.
World errors
Fixed
Fixed errors with campfires being placed, the rune dome clearing its arena, terrain right after a teleport, the monolith boss leaving, stations held in the build menu, other mods' plants, refunds with a full bag, spell echoes and aftershocks.
Monoliths in other worlds
Fixed
Worlds without a start temple (some world generation mods) now get their rune monoliths too, placed around the world centre.
Morkhalla
Fixed
The Great Rune of Awakening restores destroyed dungeon objects, including the black ice crystal in Morkhalla.
Server memory
Fixed
Fixed a server memory leak: every item that appeared in the world was kept in memory until restart.
Minions
Eitr reserved for minions
Fixed
Minions no longer keep eitr reserved after they despawn, are unsummoned for distance or stay behind in an unloaded area.
Vanilla summoning staves reserve eitr at the moment of the cast, so spamming the staff during the rise no longer summons beyond your eitr.
The mod's summoning staves no longer start a cast without enough free eitr to hold one minion.
When a cast calls several minions, the mod's summoning staves now call exactly as many as your eitr pays for.
Crafting
Boss essences
Fixed
Ascending an upgraded item no longer leaves it weaker than before: the new base is at least what the item gave at its old quality.
Magic Purse
Fixed
Coins in the purse no longer regain their weight after death.
Salvaging
Fixed
Salvaging returns materials per crafted batch: items crafted in batches, such as charges ×10, no longer return far more than they cost.
Azurite Kiln
Fixed
The kiln reliably gives 10 dust per azurite.
Vacuum Chest
Fixed
No longer loses coal or bars from a nearby kiln or smelter. If the chest cannot take the product, it drops at the furnace and is collected from there.
Creatures
Kel
Fixed
Stars and modifiers now carry through all three phases.
Tree points, boss experience and boss loot are given when the last phase is defeated, not after the first.
Boss stars
Fixed
Bosses summoned at an altar no longer occasionally miss their star roll.
Discord
Bot commands
Fixed
A temporary storage failure no longer blocks subsequent bot saves and /planner launches. Failed launches now show a clear retry message.
Server configuration
Compatibility
Compatibility settings
New
New world settings section Compatibility: each supported mod can run in full or limited, as the world host decides.
Better Archery
Changed
Runs limited by default: its arrow speed, gravity and accuracy, retrievable arrows and draw slowdown give way to Path of Valheiman. Quiver and bow zoom stay.