10 October 0.9.3 Progress Update

Hi guys!

This is just a quick note on the progress of the 0.9.3 patch. Things are going great - at this stage we expect it to be up on the Alpha realm before the end of the workweek. Once on the Alpha realm, it'll be around one week of testing before it's deployed to the Beta realm. We can't commit to exact dates yet because it's crucial for us to get this major patch right. Hurrying last minute changes will be much worse than waiting a few extra days.

We can go into a little more detail about a few pieces of extra content in 0.9.3 (other than the huge amount of rebalancing mentioned in the recent dev diary).

So far, there are two extra world areas in early Act One (both are side areas). These will be made a little more challenging than normal areas to provide optional harder content for new players.

We have seven new active skills currently working, and will enable more as they become available (even if that's a few days after the patch is deployed). Included in this set of skills are ones code-named "Heavy Strike", "Conversion Strike", "Fire Storm", "Immortal Call" and a few currently secret ones.

We currently have nine new support gems scheduled for the first release of 0.9.3. Three of these affect your minion skills!

I'll post more updates as we get closer to deploying (including hopefully some screenshot/video previews of new skills). Thanks for being so patient!

Edit: Just as a reminder - we will scale up the size of the beta once this patch is released.