Titan Quest II - Early Access Minor Update 1 - 0.1.2-public.99841+win.1784

Hello everyone!

Welcome to our first Minor Update for Titan Quest II.

In the past hotfixes we already addressed some of the more pressing issues like potential crashes.

With this update we also make minor changes to systems, quality of life topics and of course balancing.

Our goal for balancing in this update is to address some build options that trivialize the game to a degree we hadn't intended.

In general our approach to weakening things is to never "overnerf". Abilities should still be fun and do what they promise. We just want to bring them in line more with what is intended.

With any changes we make, we will monitor how they impact gameplay and then re-evaluate them for future updates.

It's important to mention that we don't plan to focus on only nerfing things in the future. On the contrary. We are looking at skills and playstyles that underperform and will buff those with future updates as well.

The major topics we wanted to address in regards to balancing in this patch are:

- Ice Shards: You all knew this one was coming. As many of you are aware this ability over-performed "slightly". Our main goal is to ensure the ability can't "do it all" without much drawback anymore.

In addition we changed the "Chaos" modifier so that it can be more useful on its own.

- Overload: We found that the drawbacks of high amounts of overload were too easy to mitigate completely. Maintaining very high Overload should now require more build and gear investment.

- Bleed Ailment Fix: We fixed a bug that caused the bleed ailment to potentially cause Rupture on application. In combination with the amount of Rupture damage not being correctly reduced on bosses (also fixed) this caused some builds to wreck bosses HP bars.

- Smaller Changes targeting "One-Shot" Builds: We made several smaller changes to abilities that are aimed at making it less easy to (almost) oneshot bosses.

You can find the further detailed balancing changes below.

A lot of feedback mentioned itemization as being not exciting enough. We will make more changes here in the future, but with this update we already wanted to start with some first steps.

Some item affixes scaled based on their item level. This meant that there was a very gradual increase in power for them, which resulted in very unexciting moments of swapping an item out due to a 1-2% increase.

We want to change these affixes to use "Tiers", like some others already do.

This means that while your items might stay "optimal" for some more levels, the increase in power for when you do find one in the next Tier will be more noticeable and thus more exciting.

In order to enhance the effects of this change we have also increased the amount of Tiers these affixes have to create a smooth but motivating item progression.

Due to time constraints we have only implemented these changes for 2 important affixes: Health increases and Flat Damage increases.

We will roll this change out for all other Affixes with future updates.

We noticed that some unique weapons were lacking in damage when compared to magic or rare weapons.

To bring them in line with damage expectations we added Flat Damage affixes to these unique weapons.

We have added a new preset for gamepad controls. The two modes now present have the following goals:

Default: The current mode. Goal here is to have as many abilities as possible accessible on-good-to-reach buttons without having to press multiple buttons. The disadvantage here is that especially when using more abilities in your skill rotation you have to perform some awkward inputs.

Alternate:The newly added mode. This uses a "modifier" button that allows us to bind buttons twice. So you can get more mileage out of your good-to-reach buttons, but need to perform a more complicated input to get that.

We have also added an "experimental" way for the potion-use in this new scheme to free up more buttons. It might take some getting used to, but we believe it has great potential.

We are looking forward to feedback from gamepad users regarding this!

- Dialogues and other interactions are now only canceled on damage taken on not when 'in combat' (as this can trigger through aura effects etc. as well)

- Interactions with destructibles will no longer trigger the 'in combat' state

- Fixed outline calculation for box shaped destructibles. Approaches should now work properly when attacking them.

- Fixed previous target for 'Keep Target For Repeated Casts' not resetting correctly when ability execution would fail (e.g. because you're out of mana)

- Portal is now usable directly when combat ends, not after a delay of a few seconds

- Fixed issue where Ability Modifiers did not unslot automatically when the Modifier they required was itself unslotted by a requirement

- Fixed all characters having access to some Tier 4 mechanics (Chill causing Freeze, Bleed causing Rupture)

- Rupture: Increased Damage 10% MaxHP -> 30% and fixed higher tier enemies not taking reduced damage from Rupture

- Earth - Flame Volley - Orbit: Fixed Orbit firing every 1.5s instead of every 1s

- Earth - Ring of Flame - Weakening Heat: Fixed Resistance reduction being applied faster than intended

- Earth - Roiling Magma - Overload: Now refunds Energy over 1s instead of instantly

- Rogue - Vanish - Flash Powder: Equipping the modifier no longer causes the cooldown to be longer than expected

- Storm - Cyclone - Personal Storm: Fixed VFX stutter

- Storm - Ice Shards - Homing: Homing projectiles now start homing after traveling 1m

- Aristomenes: Fixed reduced loot

- Hippocampos: Fixed Wave Jump not being used while target is in melee

- Dysepilogos: Fixed Summon Skeletons ability not being used during Ritual of Ares fights

- Flat bonuses to Health, Damage and Health regeneration now scale with Tiers instead of Item Level

- Vendors now offer a return window for items. Bought an item by mistake? You can return it for the full price*! (* Offer only valid until leaving the shop. Does not apply to mystery items.)

- Slightly increased allowed pickup range for items in order to prevent NPCs or other minor obstacles from making them unreachable

- Fixed a bug that could cause item icons to look different during drag & drop

- Fixed a bug that could cause item icons to be mismatched, which happened particularly often for quest items

- Fixed navmesh being able to be generated on top of trapdoors, which potentially allowed items to be dropped on top of them and subsequently become unreachable once the trapdoor was opened

- Bandit Monster Infrequent: Reduced added base crit implicit value

- Reduced Maximum ailment stack bonuses on uniques

Katharsis:

- Added Affix "+x Lightning Damage"

Moonclaw:

- Energy gain is now +30 instead of +5%. Effect now has a 3 second cooldown.

Trygon's Tail:

- Removed Affix "+x Poison Damage"

- Removed Affix "+x Pierce Damage"

- Added Affix "+x Cold Damage"

Soul Carver:

- Removed Affix "+x% Increased Attack Speed"

- Added Affix "x% increased Vitality Damage"

Silence:

- Removed Affix "+x Energy Regeneration per second"

- Added Affix "+x Weapon Lightning Damage"

Kaenas' Sword:

- Removed Affix "+3% Weapon Base Critical Hit Chance"

- Added Affix "+x Strike Damage"

Sagaris Karkinos:

- Added Affix "x Cold Damage"

Shadowsting:

- Added Affix "x Vitality Damage"

- Added Affix "+ Damage vs Undead"

Raging Bull:

- Added Affix "x Strike Damage"

Megalos:

- Added Affix "x Lightning Damage"

Harpe:

- Added Affix "x Fire Damage"

Rimescythe:

- Added Affix "+x Cold Damage"

Fotia:

- Removed Affix "x% increased Ailment Power"

- Added Affix "x Fire Damage"

Thyrsus:

- Added Affix "x% increased Cast Speed"

- Changed energy potion gamepad input to RB to mirror the health potion mapping on LB

- Added setting to choose gamepad icons (automatic, XBox, PlayStation)

- Added fallback fonts for Cyrillic, CJK, Devanagari, Arabic, Greek and Coptic so you can now enter your player and Caravan inventory name with non-Latin characters

- Fixed not being able to quickly check map while running when using 'LMB context sensitive' input preset

- Enemy health bars: Health in the UI now drains with a more dynamic animation and a flash on impact. Rapid consecutive hits stack the trailing effect before interpolating down

- Added hide UI input (F10 by default)

- Added more randomized idle animations for NPCs

- Updated FSR to version 3.1.4

- Added support for AMD Anti-Lag 2

- Savegames will now be written asynchronously, to reduce hitches during saving

- Fixed several VFX which were never properly removed after playing, slowly degrading performance in extended play sessions

- Moirai Codex: Fixed chapter completion not triggering for the Flooded Farmlands chapter. Existing characters will update the codex once you load into them.

- Fixed an issue that could cause the inventory character preview to grow uncontrollably at high resolutions, eventually causing the game to crash.

- Fixed an issue that could cause items to be dropped in an unreachable position if they dropped while the player is not on the navmesh (e.g. during a jump or on a ladder)

- Core: Increased the rate at which raw skill damage and monster health scale to reduce the impact of weapon bonus damage and to offset the new increase in bonus damage on affixes (~25% more raw skill damage and monster health at level 20)

- Core - Dodge - Celerity: Adjusted Cooldown increase +0.5/1/1.5s -> +1s at all ranks

- Core - Dodge - Celerity: Reduced All Speed increase 15/30/45% -> 15/25/35%

- Core - Dodge - Dash Attack: Reduced Critical Hit Chance increase 50/100/150% -> 20/40/60%

- Core - Dodge - Dash Attack: Reduced Damage increase 20/40/60% -> 15/30/45%

- Core - Overload: Increased Self-Damage 1% MaxHP -> 1.5%

- Core - Overload: Now recovers 5 Energy per cleansed Overload over 1s

- Earth - Flame Volley - Enhanced Amplify: Removed additional required Energy spending per Amplify +1/2/3/4/5 -> +0

- Earth - Flame Volley - Orbit: Adjusted Amplify loss interval 1/1.5/2/2.5/3s -> 1/3s

- Earth - Flame Volley - Orbit: Increased Capacity Cost per rank 1 -> 2

- Earth - Flame Volley - Orbit: Reduced maximum rank 5 -> 2

- Earth - Ignite - Resistance Reduction: Reduced Resistance reduction -5/10/15/20/25% -> -4/8/12/16/20%

- Earth - Ignite - Resistance Reduction: Removed Duration increase +0.5/1/1.5/2/2.5s -> +0s

- Earth - Ring of Flame - Blazing Heat: Increased maximum Rank 3 -> 5

- Earth - Ring of Flame - Blazing Heat: Reduced Energy Reservation increase +10/20/30 -> +5/10/15/20/25

- Earth - Ring of Flame - Blazing Heat: Reduced distance-based Damage increase 60/90/120% -> 25/50/75/100/125%

- Earth - Ring of Flame - Enhanced Amplify: Reduced Energy Reservation increase with Permanency +10/20/30/40/50 -> +5/10/15/20/25

- Earth - Ring of Flame - Enhanced Amplify: Removed additional required Energy spending per Amplify +1/2/3/4/5 -> +0

- Earth - Ring of Flame - Overload: Reduced Damage increase per Overload 2/4/6% -> 1/2/3%

- Earth - Ring of Flame - Weakening Heat: Reduced Resistance reduction -4/6/8% up to -12/18/24% -> -2/4/6% up to -6/12/18%

- Earth - Ring of Flame: Reduced Damage increase per Amplify 20% -> 15%

- Earth - Ring of Flame: Reduced base Damage per second 4 -> 3.5

- Rogue - Preparation - Weapon Coating: Reduced Poison Weapon bonus damage by 60%

- Rogue - Vanish - Deadly Strike: Reduced Damage increase 20/40/60/80/100% -> 20/30/40/50/60%

- Rogue - Vanish - Lifesteal: Fixed bonus Vitality Weapon Damage using the wrong formula and scaling faster than intended

- Rogue - Vanish - Lifesteal: Reduced Vitality Weapon bonus damage by 75%

- Storm - Ice Shards - Chaos: Increased Capacity Cost per rank 1 -> 2

- Storm - Ice Shards - Chaos: Increased Energy Cost increase +1/2/3 -> +20

- Storm - Ice Shards - Chaos: Now grants 100% more Projectiles instead of +4/8/12 additional Projectiles

- Storm - Ice Shards - Chaos: Projectiles now spiral outwards instead of flying straight to make hitting enemies easier without homing

- Storm - Ice Shards - Chaos: Reduced maximum rank 3 -> 1

- Storm - Ice Shards - Homing: Adjusted Homing Strength +80/100/120 -> +100

- Storm - Ice Shards - Homing: Adjusted Projectile Speed reduction 20/30/40% -> 30%

- Storm - Ice Shards - Homing: Increased Capacity Cost 1 -> 3 per rank

- Storm - Ice Shards - Homing: Ranks 3 -> 1

- Storm - Ice Shards - Homing: Removed Projectile Range increase 0/10/20% -> 0%

- Storm - Ice Shards - Infused Shard: Reduced bonus Cold Damage from Energy Reservation by 50%

- Storm - Ice Shards - Orbit: Adjusted Energy Cost increase +10/15/20 -> +20

- Storm - Ice Shards - Orbit: Adjusted Projectile Range increase 0/50/100% -> 100%

- Storm - Ice Shards - Orbit: Capacity Cost per rank 1 -> 2

- Storm - Ice Shards - Orbit: Maximum ranks 3 -> 1

- Storm - Ice Shards - Projectile Penetration: Increased Capacity Cost per rank 1 -> 2

- Storm - Ice Shards - Projectile Penetration: Instead of 20% less Damage per penetrated target it now deals 50% less Damage after the first one

- Storm - Ice Shards - Projectile Penetration: Removed Energy Cost increase +1/2/3 -> +0

- Storm - Ice Shards - Projectile Penetration: Removed Projectile Speed increase 20/40/60% -> 0%

- Storm - Ice Shards: Reduced base Damage 5-8 -> 5-7

- Storm - Overcharge Passive - Duration Feat: Reduced Overload Damage Reduction 40% -> 15%

- Storm - Overcharge Passive - Duration Feat: Reduced Overload Duration increase 100% -> 50%

- Storm - Overcharge Passive - Energy Feat: Instead of instantly recovering 3 Energy on cleanse recover 5 Energy over 1s

- Warfare - Leap - Cooldown Charge: Reduced Cooldown increase +3/6s -> +1s at all ranks

- Warfare - Leap - Seismic Leap: Increased Launch Damage 4/6/8 -> 10/12/14

- Warfare - Leap - Slam Attack: Increased Weapon Damage 160% -> 210%

- Warfare - Leap: Increased Base Damage 15 -> 20

- Items - Bandit Monster Infrequent: Reduced added base crit implicit value

- Items - Moonclaw: Energy gain is now +30 instead of +5%. Effect now has a 3 second cooldown

- Items - Affixes: Flat bonuses to Health, Damage and Health regeneration now scale with Tiers instead of Item Level

- Items: Reduced maximum ailment stack bonuses on unique items