We're about to enter week seven of the Beta for our upcoming expansion, The Fall of Oriath! You may notice that today's Beta report is a day early. This is because we're making room for our big announcement tomorrow! In the meantime, today's report discusses some of the changes we've made so far and what to expect in coming update.

Last week we released Wave Three of the Beta changes and two smaller updates that can be found here and here.

The Labyrinth

Thanks to everyone who replied to the Labyrinth Feedback thread. Josiah has read through the feedback, and wanted to let everyone know what is coming up with future changes:

Josiah: Thank you all for taking the time to write in about the Labyrinth. I've read through all of your feedback (as of this post), and we've made some adjustments to our update task accordingly. Once again, we don't have plentiful time before 3.0.0 is in your hands, so the scope of this Labyrinth update is fairly small.

The simplified layout and shorter time commitment for the first two runs of the Labyrinth appear to be working well for people. Izaro himself is still a bit out of step with the point in the game we would like people to reasonably expect to fight him, the only Izaro change that made it to beta was the removal of traps from his arena (normal), but we plan to make two additional changes before launch:

• Some Izaro mechanics will be introduced in later Labyrinth Difficulties, with Curses and Elementals introduced in the Second Labyrinth and Charge Disruptors introduced in the Third Labyrinth.
• Izaro will have specifically balanced buffs for each Labyrinth difficulty, making him considerably less murderous in the first Labyrinth, and noticeably less so in the second.

The intention here is that more builds can take on the first two Labyrinths right at level, hopefully getting some experience out of the deal. Item rewards are another thing we are working to improve, searching for items in the Labyrinth will always be a lot more dangerous than the other options available, and it's clear that the rewards for exploring are not in line with the challenge and time investment. Unlike our layout and difficulty changes, reward changes do apply to the third and End-game Labyrinth.

• We are adding random reward tables for all optional chests and shrines in the Labyrinth. We love players sharing knowledge and maps with each-other, but sadly this feature was sapping all the fun out of reaching a hidden cache of items.
• Darkshrines now occur only in a specific context, which is much less challenging to reach than other rewards.
• We are replacing the effects of all Labyrinth Darkshrines. These should remain interesting and unique, without adding raw power to Izaro.
• There are now always two treasure keys available from optional trap gauntlets and puzzles.
• The rewards for completing optional trap gauntlets and puzzles have been completely rebuilt. There are some fun differences between what they drop in the early game and the late game, but items that only take up one inventory slot feature prominently.
• Silver Cache chests have been rebuilt. There were some particularly disappointing potential rewards for these, and things such as like shrines or minor chest rewards have been removed. We are aware that these take ages to unlock, and this adjustment aims to make it more worthwhile to do so.
• In the first and second Labyrinths, silver keys are always in the same area as their silver cache. Rewards differ from the higher difficulties, aimed more towards being useful for new characters.

Finally we are using any spare time to make some minor layout adjustments to the third and Endgame Labyrinth as well. Ideally adjusting all golden door sections into a choice between two paths, with the key in the same area as the door.

We are also looking into better signalling of optional challenges within the Labyrinth, using minimap icons and more distinctive visuals to let you know when you’ve stumbled across something a little more dangerous.

Feedback on Environments

This weeks thread for focused feedback is about the environments of the new acts. If you want to post feedback on this area, please check out this thread and post your feedback.

Wave Four of Beta Changes

We are busy working on what is likely the final big wave of changes to the beta. Our focus for the next wave is getting something resembling a complete balance pass for gathering information and getting some details on what the 3.0.0 release should look like.

Some highlights of upcoming changes include:

• Changes to various maps, mostly around addressing the current meta. We want to see different shaping strategies in use, and at the very least not the "shaped strand meta".
• More changes to poison and bleed damage. The focus here will be on the top end of damage, where we still have some players able to do millions of damage a second without compromising survivability. We want to reign that in, without damaging general uses of these damage types.
• Balance changes to unique flasks.

The New Microtransaction System Update

The 2.6.3 update that introduces the new microtransaction is currently scheduled for Friday. We'll post a confirmation on Thursday to let you know that this is going ahead as planned. We wanted to apologise again for the delay with this system.

Thank you again for all of your hard work as a community! We really appreciate it and can't wait to share more information with you tomorrow.