[Beta Test] Hunter's Path now available!

[Bryce]

Hello hunters!

Today we are opening up the Hunter's Path Beta to a wider audience!

For the past couple of weeks, our Discord community has been quietly testing our upcoming patch, reporting crashes, bugs, and giving feedback to help us prepare the content for a wider release. Thank you to everyone who has participated so far! A lot has changed about the game in the past 5 months, so if you're interested in being part of the final phase of testing the content (or even just getting an early peek at what's coming out soon) check out the beta!

More details

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New Minibosses and Hunts

• Added 9 new minibosses to the game, for a total of 16 minibosses
• Added "miniboss hunts" for each miniboss in the game
• Hunter's Path challenges have been added to each hunt

Hunter's Path

• The Heartstone system has been replaced with a new "Hunter's Path" talent system
  • Earn Heart Shards by doing the Hunter's Path challenges in each hunt
  • Heart Shards can be spent to create talent builds that increase your hunter's power
  • Unlock new talents by collecting Heartstones from Boss Rots

Frenzy System Changes

• The idea of frenzy 1 - 3 is gone, being simply replaced with "Frenzy"
• Miniboss Hunts with Anomalies are always frenzied, with increasing difficulty as you progress through the story
• Boss Hunts become permanently frenzied after the final Boss Rot has been defeated
• Super Frenzy is unlocked after completing a boss hunt's frenzy mode

Anomaly System Changes

• Multiple anomalies can be active at the same time
• Anomalies will only be active on miniboss hunts, boss hunts cannot have anomalies
• Additional Heart Shards can be earned by doing Anomalied hunts

Market Room Changes

• Each Boss Hunt (and it's related Miniboss Hunts) now sell specific sets of armour and weapons that will only appear within those locations

Relationship System

• You can now give gifts to the villagers in your town to increase your relationship level with them & get various benefits
  • Access the relationship screen through your Diary, located near the Chest

Character Selection & Creation Flow

• Faster creation of characters, and allows multiple characters to be created or selected at the same time
  • Full character creator still accessible in town

Mannequin Changes

• The mannequin is now used to access the new Loadout system
• Loadouts save equipment, gem and talent selections
• Your loadouts can be accessed from any mannequin

Equipment Screen Improvements

• You can now upgrade & equip armour and weapons from the same station

New Character Customization Options

• Added new customization options to the Ogre species (now called the Neander species), allowing creation of a character that looks human.

Misc

• QOL changes throughout the UI and Town
• Added many new random events

Thank you for testing and submitting feedback & bug reports! And another HUGE thank you to our Discord community for helping us test early versions of this beta so we could iron out issues before we opened it up to a wider audience.

How to play

1. Close Rotwood if it is running.
2. In Steam, click on Library > Games.
3. Scroll down to Rotwood.
4. Right click, select Properties.
5. Go to the Betas tab.
6. In the dropdown, select the 'publicbeta' branch. (You may need to restart Steam to see this branch)
7. In that same properties window, go to the Installed Files tab.
8. Click Verify integrity of game files.
9. Your game will now be updated to the beta branch.

Save files
The beta branch uses a completely separate save file, due to its experimental nature.

The beta branch is to gather feedback and ensure stability before release to the live game. If you were to copy over your existing savefile, it would work, but it is strongly recommended to store a backup of your save file if you did so. We are not treating this branch as a live branch, so we will not be taking extra precautions to support moving your save file back to the live branch.

[Kacpert25]

7 minutes ago, Bryce said:

Added "miniboss hunts" for each miniboss in the game

That's not true, because Magmoo doesn't have its own hunt 

11 minutes ago, Bryce said:

Added new customization options to the Ogre species, allowing creation of a character that looks human.

More likely Neander species.

[PerJacob]

Are you planning to add more stuff to this beta, or are we mostly in the bug-fixing stage?

[Anxiattack]

6 hours ago, Kacpert25 said:

That's not true, because Magmoo doesn't have its own hunt 

 

Exactly. I'm still wanting that Magmoo hunt lol. (Incase you couldn't tell by the whole post I made about it haha!)

[Instant-Noodles]

Here are GIFs of the 9 new and 7 redesigned mini-bosses:

Mini Bosses (Bulbin King / Armourillo / Whammo / Metechi the Elder / Zephyr / Gourdo Twins / Overgrown Peashooter / Belcher / Noxin / Prima Floracrane / Southpaw / Onyx / Prizefighter Bullrog / Magmoo / Tusker / Ruin Warden)

Spoiler

    

  

  

 

 

  

 

As well, here's an animated mock of the new map with all mini hunt locations under anomaly effects (note: only 3 possible at one time in the beta) and all hunt locations Super Frenzied (note: only 4 available in the beta).  However, it's slightly pixelated and artifact-ed though due to GIF compression.

Map

Spoiler

More Rotwood GIFs can be found in my older posts from: Feb 2025 (Delicious Beta), Jan 2025 / #2 (Ruins Beta), Oct 2024 (Splintershard Beta), Jun 2024 (Bonechill Beta), May 2024 (Early Access Launch), Feb 2024 / #2 (Next Fest Demo), Dec 2023 (Playtest 3), Sep 2023 (Multiplayer Stress Test), & Jun 2023 (Combat Focus Test).

--

As an aside, it seems like the official Ruins Beta thread on the forums (from January 2025 / 2 betas ago) has been hidden for some reason?  All the beta patch notes from that thread are now no longer accessible.  Not sure if a dev can restore that thread.

[JoeW]

14 hours ago, Instant-Noodles said:

As an aside, it seems like the official Ruins Beta thread on the forums (from January 2025 / 2 betas ago) has been hidden for some reason?  All the beta patch notes from that thread are now no longer accessible.  Not sure if a dev can restore that thread.

I think it's because we may have previously merged some threads to keep everything in one place. I don't have anything at that link either. 

[Bryce]

Beta Hotfix [685428]

Fixes:

• Fixed an issue where vending machines that consume health would take more health than intended if the player had a power that increases damage taken
• Fixed some issues that caused parts of the UI to become uninteractable at times
• Fixed several issues with mannequins when upgrading old mannequins into saved loadouts
• Fixed display issues when modifying a loadout that is displayed on a mannequin in an online game
• The totem created by The Bam Bamboozle hammer no longer counts as a environmental object
• Fixed a bug that caused upgraded armour to display the wrong quality colour at times
• Fixed a soft lock caused by accepting a steam invite while on the title screen of the game
• Fixed a variety of issues with the UI's focus bracket system
• Fixed a bug where enemies could remain on the map after defeating a boss
• Improved the stability of the Anomaly UI

Changes:

• Added new icons in the Diary
• Reworked the Antleer armour set
• Slightly adjusted the positions of Berna and Hamish in town to make navigating town easier

[Instant-Noodles]

7 hours ago, JoeW said:

I think it's because we may have previously merged some threads to keep everything in one place. I don't have anything at that link either. 

That's quite interesting since it seems the posts from that thread are no where to be found anymore.  There's still a snapshot of that thread on the WayBackMachine: https://web.archive.org/web/20250321011030/https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/163172-beta-test-ruined-capital-now-live/, but that only goes up to the second Ruins Beta patch notes.

More oddly, that thread still shows up in jambell's topic history, but the link there also leads to the same missing thread.   As well, all the January 2025 patch notes are also absent from the Rotwood Early Access - Game Updates section of the forum.

[Kacpert25]

10 hours ago, Bryce said:

Reworked the Antleer armour set

I'm not a fan of these changes to the Antleer set. Besides Antleer Hide, it's a very good change. 

Spoiler

The new armor effects have nothing to do with Antleer. I mean, okay, maybe the Antleer Hunting Boots effect still fits somehow. 
But what does the amount of healing for low health have to do with a mob that simply runs fast?

[AviatorBean]

2 hours ago, Kacpert25 said:

The new armor effects have nothing to do with Antleer. I mean, okay, maybe the Antleer Hunting Boots effect still fits somehow. 
But what does the amount of healing for low health have to do with a mob that simply runs fast?

Armor sets don't necessarily have to be based around the mechanics of a rot, besides it's not like they do much more than charge and kick which plenty of rots do similar things already. Personally i'm a big fan of these changes, they're fun to play around. I'm not the biggest fan of destroying environmentals to procc the antleer hide but it's still a cool armor anyway

[Sivdun]

I understand why hide was nerfed, 100% dmg reduction was ridiculous and makes three areas or run with ice blocks anomaly a free win, but why getting rid of dmg on the crown? I would rather have extra dmg per 100 health in the same way the boots work than extra healing on it.

[Creamean6_7]

33 minutes ago, Sivdun said:

I understand why hide was nerfed, 100% dmg reduction was ridiculous and makes three areas or run with ice blocks anomaly a free win, but why getting rid of dmg on the crown? I would rather have extra dmg per 100 health in the same way the boots work than extra healing on it.

I once saw a player whose health score was 166330.

[Kacpert25]

1 hour ago, Creamean6_7 said:

I once saw a player whose health score was 166330.

I don't see a problem. Just add a max damage cap and that's it.

[Creamean6_7]

3 hours ago, Kacpert25 said:

我没有看到任何问题。只需添加最大伤害帽,就是这样。

I think it's ok. The effect of this helmet will not give garlic suit players, and players who play weapons can also exceed the damage of garlic suit players.

[Bryce]

Beta Hotfix [686067]
Fixes:

• Antleer armour pieces set the correct bonus values immediately on equip
• Fixed issues where certain props could appear in different locations when playing online
• Fixed a crash when trying to open the town decor crafting screen right as you load into town
• Fixed some hair laying issues
• Fixed a bug where it was possible for older saves to be above the maximum exploration level for a region
• Fixed a bug that caused incorrect miniboss names to be displayed
• Fixed an issue where the Bonejaw's Charge skill behaved strangely when the player was pushed by a force like wind
• You can no longer reroll powers purchased from special encounter vending machines, which caused a crash
• Rook's crystals can no longer be charmed

Changes:

• Updated translations
• Improved experience when adding multiple local players in the main menu

[Bryce]

Beta Hotfix [686217]

Fixes:

• Fixed a crash that could happen when trying to spawn fabled powers
• Fixed an issue that prevented reconnecting a disconnected controller when playing online
• Fixed a crash that could happen in the market when room travel timed out while other players were still shopping
• Fixed a crash that could happen if the game you were trying to join ended as you were connecting
• Updated the description of the Teffressence Container Gem to show the correct item level

Changes:

• Updated translations