Greetings, Flameborn!

We’re thrilled to bring you Thralls of Twilight, a new update filled with darkness, despair, and a bunch of cool new stuff (not all of it dark or hopeless), as well as the usual quality of life improvements and fixes. Not only have we revamped the Shroud, we've also given the Nomad Steppes and Kindlewastes a facelift, and added an NPC that can also give you a facelift! And much more...

If you're a story kind of person, we have a fancy trailer here...



And as always, if you're in a hurry or don't wanna read, you'll find the highlights in video format here:

Changelog for Update #6 v.0.8.1.0

Version Number: 697018

Highlights

The future is foggier than ever before…

With Update 6: “Thralls of Twilight,” we’ve taken a hard look at gameplay within the Shroud–how it looks, how it feels, and how much time players spend in it. Our goals were clear:

• Overhaul the Shroud’s visual identity–from the fog itself to the landscapes it engulfs across all biomes.
• Deepen the contrast between gameplay above and within the Shroud by introducing unique new challenges, enemies, and mechanics.
• Make time spent in the Shroud feel rewarding by introducing exclusive resources, loot, and powerful incentives.

Rework of the Shrouded Landscapes and Shroud Visuals.

• The Shroud has received a full visual rework with updated materials and textures. We’ve also rewritten our volumetric renderer to give the Shroud and clouds a higher visual fidelity.
• Landscape overhauls across the Shrouded zones added more variety, verticality, and reasons to explore.
• Over 100 new points of interest–from hidden nooks to substantial new encounters–now enrich the Shrouded zones. Many existing locations have also been visually refreshed or reimagined for better gameplay.
• Some enemies can apply curses or diseases with their attacks. Cures can be crafted from the new resources.

New Enemies for Shrouded Areas.

• The Shroud is now more treacherous than ever, with many new enemies - including all-new creatures and deadly variants. Expect to be surprised, challenged, and occasionally overwhelmed…

Introducing the Weapon Gem System—a new way to empower your weapons with unique effects and abilities.

• Weapons of higher rarity now have a chance for a gem slot (Note: This does not apply retroactively to weapons acquired before Update 6.)
• Weapon Gems can drop from powerful enemies and be socketed into eligible weapons.
• To socket a gem, players must find mystical locations deep in the Shroud: Gem Forges.
• Gems can be upgraded, recycled, slotted, and removed–providing meaningful customization for your arsenal.

Exclusive Shroud Rewards

New crafting resources found only in the Shroud unlock powerful new gear and consumables, including:

• New armor sets
• New Spell types
• Confusion grenades
• Critter bombs
• Mobile repair kits for fixing weapons in the field

Several older crafting recipes – like enhancing the Flame Altar – have also been updated to include these new resources, further integrating them into your progression.

New Risks & Rewards after Dark

As with the Shroud, we’ve expanded nighttime gameplay with new challenges and, more importantly, exclusive rewards for players bold enough to explore after sundown. The night is no longer just a time to survive–it’s a time to thrive.

Night Enemy Patrols

Nighttime enemy activity has been ramped up:

• Scavenger patrols now roam the roads under cover of night looking for rare resources and items. Keep your torch close... and your weapon closer.
• Groups of the Fell roam the lands above at night, trying to temporarily spread the Shroud.

Night-Blooming Flora

New plants can now be found blooming at night across all biomes.

• These rare blooms offer unique crafting materials and special food.
• They are also used for stronger versions of existing potions.

Night Temples

Introducing Night Temples, a brand new type of point of interest found in every region of Embervale. These temples:

• Can only be entered at night: their doors remain sealed during the day.
• Feature all-new architectural elements and are filled with dangerous traps.
• Offer exclusive rewards for those who dare to brave their depths.

Biome Visual Upgrades

Across the world, we’ve enhanced the visual quality of several biomes with lush new vegetation, refined landscapes, and reworked textures. These upgrades bring more depth and beauty to exploration, whether you're climbing a cliffside or crossing a war-torn valley.
The Nomad Highlands and Kindlewastes in particular have received a comprehensive visual overhaul, breathing new life into their unique environments.
Additionally, many points of interest throughout the world have been reworked–not just in terms of visuals, but also in enemy placement and encounter design, offering more meaningful and immersive challenges.

Player Customization Improvements

Update 6 brings major upgrades to player customization, giving you more ways to define your look, both through armor styling and character appearance.

In-game Player Customization

Meet Elio Ricci the Barber, a new survivor who can be found and unlocked via a dedicated quest.

• Once placed in your base, Elio grants access to the full character customization menu, allowing you to tweak your appearance at any time.
• Several new character presets and customization options are now available.
• Through newly-added quests, you can also discover additional hairstyles, hair colors, and eye colors hidden throughout Embervale.

Tintable Armor & Vanity Outfits

Most armor sets and vanity outfits can now be tinted using a brand-new crafting system:

• A new tinting station for your base to create and apply color palettes.
• Color palette items can be found and crafted to create endless customization for most of your existing armor pieces.

Technical Improvements

• CPU performance for multiplayer hosts and dedicated servers has been significantly optimized.
• Several issues around the topic of brightness and bloom have been fixed and improved to create a more balanced visual quality. As we understand that there is a vast variety of lighting conditions and monitor types we’ve also added brightness and bloom adjustment sliders to allow for better customization.
• To create more beautiful sunsets / sunrises we’ve improved sky and atmosphere rendering as well as our day & night transition.
• Lighting, tone mapping, shadows and global illumination have been improved. Especially trees and other large objects now participate in global illumination, so lighting in forests and densely overgrown areas is much more immersive now.
• As mentioned earlier our volumetric rendering has been rewritten to produce a more detailed presentation for the shroud and clouds in the sky with a stronger atmosphere and God rays.
• Please note: work on rendering improvements is still an ongoing process and we will continue to work hard to further improve visual quality and performance with future updates.

Still Working on It

• The visible barrier when entering the Shroud is still being worked on. Especially the barrier when reaching a Shroud level that is deadly is very difficult to see at the moment. This will be addressed in an upcoming patch.
• Shadows cast by trees can flicker noticeably.

Changelog

New Technology, Performance, and Technical Improvements

• Shroud rendering was completely reworked. This rework allows, among others, more advanced lighting features. It is also the basis for exciting new features in future updates, they write, enigmatically.
• Cloud rendering has been reworked, sunlight now reacts more realistically to clouds in the sky.
• Several issues with bloom and exposure have been fixed.
• Bloom intensity can now be adjusted in the graphical settings.
• Brightness can also be adjusted in display settings.
• Sharpness settings in the graphical settings have been reworked. With Update 6, the settings are reset to default. Please re-adjust if necessary.
• The colors of the sky and the atmosphere, especially during the sunset and sunrise, have been improved.
• Improved the influence of sky light for the dynamic global illumination.
• Trees and other large objects now participate in global illumination–lighting in overgrown areas and forests (like the Revelwoods) has particularly benefited.
• Improved the visual quality of LOD models.
• Added subsurface textures for tree and bush foliage.
• Fixed instances where sunlight would leak through solid ground or walls.
• Fixed instances where terrain would show cracks, allowing a peek into the endless void of the beyond, which is surprisingly unremarkable.
• Increased the precision of the collision for terrain. This helps specifically for loot drops that previously dropped on the ground and vanished into the terrain. Hope it was nothing important.
• XeSS is now supported when using Intel graphics cards.
• Fixed an issue that caused freshly started dedicated servers to show “Version mismatch” in the server list for a short while, even if the version matched with the client.
• Anti-aliasing in the character menu has been improved.
• Re-enabled the current Steam API for network connections. Changes have been made to take into account users hosting on home networks.
• Further improved the compilation speed of VFX shaders in the main menu.
• Fixed several rare crashes reported by players.

Combat and Gameplay

• Dangerous enemies now have the chance to drop a new gameplay item: Weapon Gems. Once found, weapon gems can be slotted into weapons that have the weapon gem slot at Gem Forges in the Shroud. Weapon gems add specific bonuses and perks to the weapons that they are slotted into.
• Added many new enemy types to the game. Some are completely new, others are variations of existing enemies.
• Added 2 new channelled beam spells to the game: one heals, the other one really doesn’t.
• All wand projectiles are now moving noticeably faster. This will increase the likelihood of hitting moving enemies when using wands.
• There are now two very distinct types of wands: very fast shooting wands and wands with multiple projectiles per shot.
• Slightly increased spell casting speed for several spells, including fireballs and ice bolts.
• Added a wide range of new crafting materials and lootable resources to the game world and to enemy loot.
• Elite and Boss enemies now drop Legendary Runes, which are required to unlock higher-tier perks of legendary weapons.
• Added item level information to all material resource items. This information can be used by players to prioritize which items are worth keeping in the backpack and which can be discarded should the backpack fill up.
• Newly-crafted backpack expansions now offer an additional row of backpack space each. Existing players have to craft and equip the backpack again to gain access to the expansion.
• Made a first version of the backpack extensions available earlier in the crafting progression.
• Added a craftable ward item in the Albaneve Summits tier.
• Reworked the staggering system for enemies.
• Some enemies can now apply diseases or curses with their attacks. Cures against such curses and diseases can be crafted from newly available crafting resources.
• The chance for the curse feature to be triggered can be tweaked or completely disabled in the world settings.
• Repair kits can now be crafted as consumables to restore weapon durability while exploring.
• Added several new foods, potions and other consumables that can be crafted with new resources harvested from the Shroud areas, night plants, and enemies.
• Sleeping now also slowly regenerates health. Finally.
• Increased the XP needed for level ups to balance out the new quests and other ways to gain experience along the journey.
• Added directional hit reactions to many enemies for more visually impactful damage feedback.
• The player collision now correctly shrinks vertically when sneaking and sitting, so you can finally crawl into narrow spaces.
• Several new weapons can be found as unique lore weapons in the Albaneve Summits.
• Switched the item rarity between the Gemini Ring and the Ring of Endless Life to match their actual values.
• Fixed an issue with bows that led to inconsistent power levels.
• Tweaked the shape of the Shroud Banshees so that it is easier to hit them with melee weapons.
• Increased the stamina cost for the jump attack skill from 25 to 50. It should be a lot less spammable now.
• Reduced the stamina cost for evasion from 33 to 20.
• Fixed some incorrect calculations of mana costs when casting spells.
• Tweaked projectile parry window to be easier and improved visual communication for parriability.
• Fixed an issue with channeling spells that would cause dead enemies to still be targeted during the casting.
• Fixed several issues with ranged enemy behavior when trying to find a good attack position. Likewise, the behavior of melee enemies when trying to reach the player has been improved.
• Slightly reduced the walking speed of the player character when moving backwards while in combat (locked-on) with an enemy.
• Controls for ranged combat are more precise now, preventing accidentally shooting another arrow or spell by pressing the shoot button or key just a little bit too long. Activating aim-mode and charging the shot at the same time now works reliably. Additionally, input buffering for ranged combat has been improved for a more fluid combat experience while using bows, wands, and staffs.
• Fixed several issues with patrolling and movement of enemies & farm animals, such as incorrect stop-and-go behavior.
• Added more fixes to prevent animals from leaving the player base. Come back, Snowy!
• Fixed fallen player character corpses rotating to face their target-locked enemies.
• Stun VFX is now correctly removed along with stun effects when using Emergency Blink.
• Fixed a bug with the locked treasure chests that would play an opening animation while tinkering with the lock.
• Boars no longer lose their awareness of what is going on while fleeing and no longer stand around at a time when danger–that is you!–is still near.
• Fixed a camera glitch when using the staff while having the skill “Eagle Eye” unlocked.

Player Customization

• Added a new survivor to the game: the Barber. When placed in the player base, he offers full player customization. While following quests all over Embervale, additional player customization options can be unlocked.
• Added 4 new character presets.
• Added 7 new hairstyles.
• Added several new hair colors.
• Added several new eye colors.
• Hiding armor is now possible for each armor part, not just helmets and gloves.

Building and Crafting

• Added a new crafting station for the player base: the coloring station for crafting color palettes and applying new colors to armor and outfits.
• Added a new craftable item type to the game: color palettes. Once crafted, it can be applied to armor and outfit pieces at the coloring station to change the tinting of the pieces.
• Several new armor sets can be crafted at the various crafting survivors.
• A new farming animal can be added to the player base once tamed: the Round-Billed Sailer from the Kindlewastes. It will produce feathers when sheltered and fed.
• Survivors are now spending their time more convincingly. For example, there are now fewer chances of a survivor going back and forth between two points of interest in the player base constantly. Also, added several new animations to all survivors.
• A new feature has been added to the Flame Altar: When placing a player base onto a location that contains progress-relevant unique items or quest rewards, these items can now be collected from this particular Flame Altar as a fallback. Please note that items can only be collected from the Flame Altar once.
• Further expanded the range of quests that can be completed despite a player base being present at a quest step location.
• Added many new terrain materials to be used in player bases.
• Fixed unlock criteria for several road terrain materials.
• Revelwood dirt can now correctly be used in terraforming shapes.
• Added several new props for the player base as craftable recipes.
• Added numerous formerly unavailable kitchen props to the list of craftable recipes. Your kitchens will never have been this messy… sorry we mean realistic.
• Added display props for musical instruments.
• Upgrading the Flame Altar now has unique sounds and visual effects per upgrade level.
• Fixed the comfort level for paper lanterns and sofas.
• Fixed several recipe sorting issues.
• Improved the client-side prediction for terraforming terrain.

Game world

• Added a new type of point of interest at numerous locations to the gameworld in the Shroud: the Shroud Lairs.
• A new type of location has been added in which the Gem Forges can be found–used for upgrading, recycling, adding, and removing Weapon Gems.
• A new type of location was introduced in the Shroud where dangerous enemies can be summoned.
• Many new, challenging “Night Temples” have been added to the world. Their doors only open from dusk till dawn, but behind the traps and puzzles, new rewards are waiting for you.
• Added many new smaller and larger points of interest to Shrouded areas, such as abandoned settlements and ruins.
• Significantly reworked the landscape in many areas of Embervale. The Nomad Highlands and the Kindlewastes have especially received a visual overhaul, among others, with new terrain topology, new and updated vegetation, and terrain texture improvements.
• Improved the selection and position of enemies and numerous older points of interest and camps. Specifically, combat encounters in many locations in the Albaneve Summits have been tweaked for balancing and variety.
• Added multiple new quests introducing the various new gameplay elements.
• Some locations now have moving platforms as gameplay elements.
• Fixed an issue with door puzzle indicators not showing their “on” state correctly from certain distances.
• Updated and polished several older plant models.
• Added several new bushes and trees to various biomes.
• Added several new plants that only appear & bloom at night. They can be collected as resources for new recipes.
• Reworked the plant overgrowth of numerous ruins and settlements all over Embervale.
• Fixed numerous minor level design issues at locations all over Embervale, such as blocked paths. You shall now pass.
• Fixed issues with terrain texture blending in the gameworld, thereby improving the visuals of the scenery.
• Improved the particle effects when using explosives for many terrain materials.
• New stacks of explosive barrels have been introduced in many locations.
• Loot chests are now correctly shown as open when they have been emptied already.
• Players now sink into deadly red Shroud mud.
• Added more occurrences for Shroud Time-restoring hourglass capsules into Shrouded areas to compensate for the additional areas to discover within the Shroud.
• Added moths to the Revelwoods; moths can only be collected at night for resources.
• Footsteps now kick dirt and other particles into the correct direction.
• Tweaked the durability of several props.

User Interface and Quest Journal

• Added multiple new menus to support the new gameplay features weapon gems, armor tinting, and player customization at the Barber NPC.
• An item comparison widget has been added to the backpack and equipment menu.
• A new widget has been added to the map, showing a list of all available fast travel destinations and giving an overview of the current locations of the various survivors.
• Added difficulty ratings to quests relative to the player level in the Quest Menu.
• Added colors to quest locations in the world map, indicating the relative difficulty of the quest.
• If a quest has a search area as a step, reaching this search area now triggers a correct notification at the HUD compass rather than the generic “Location Reached” as previously.
• The map marker filter menu has been reworked and several improvements have been added to the map markers in general.
• The compass in the HUD now correctly shows if a goal, such as a tombstone, is below or above the current position of the player character.
• Armor items can now be equipped directly from chests.
• The detailed info for items has been reworked. Damage types are now displayed separately. If upgrading a weapon adds several instances of a perk, then this is now shown in a more condensed view. Also, fixed several cases where damage values were calculated incorrectly in the item info.
• The weapon upgrading menu now has more details about upgrading costs.
• Buffs, debuffs, and states are now displayed on enemy health bars.
• Fixed an issue that showed interactions with furniture and other props in the game world even though the interaction wasn’t possible.
• Fixed world map loading issues when playing in resolutions such as 16:10, wide screens and 4k.
• When closing the journal and then reopening it, the last opened tab is now opened at the default position, rather than reopening at a sub-menu within the tab.
• Renaming the Flame Altar is no longer possible while the player base is being deactivated.
• Equipping rings from the backpack is now correctly working for both ring slots.
• Added new triggers to quests so that personal quests get completed more reliably while playing in a party.
• Fixed an issue that could lead to long player health bars overlapping the compass at the center of the screen.
• Fixed several menu layout issues when text scaling is set to 140%.
• Reworked the layout of the server lists in the join menu. We split up the server list into player-hosted games and dedicated servers which allows for more accurate searches.
• Reworked the server search-by-IP widget. It now shows the necessary port information and it also allows directly joining the found server.
• Fixed the issue where very long server names could overlap the player count info on the server list.
• Added multiple fixes and improvements to the joining menu.
• Added a link in the server list menu to open a Discord server dedicated to groups searching for players and vice versa.
• Location names are now only shown for longer when arriving at a location for the first time. In subsequent visits, the location name is only shown for a short duration.
• Fixed loot log being displayed when quick-moving items from the action bar to the backpack and vice versa.
• Finding legendary weapons now triggers a loot message at the center of the screen for a short moment.
• Fixed an issue that caused the character customization to not reset properly when leaving character creation before confirming.
• Added failsafes to several quests to avoid instances where they couldn’t be solved correctly.
• Fixed an issue that caused item icons in the inventory to turn black when drag and dropping an item from the chest to the backpack while the context menu is open.
• Improved the settings for the frost UI vignette to give players better options to show as much or as little of the vignette as preferred.
• Fixed an issue with factory workstations. It is now possible to add either 1 or stacks of 10 resources from magic chests to the inventory when the factory is currently not running.
• Several plants received a new inventory icon, such as sugar cane and mushroom seedling.
• Added several unique names and descriptions to items and props that previously shared their names and descriptions.

Audio

• Added a sound occlusion system, including sound path tracing for sounds, creating a more natural soundscape.
• Fixed several issues with reverb.
• Improved the selection of the correct ambient sounds for numerous locations.
• Added new music tracks for the new types of locations in Embervale.
• Added player sounds to player emotes where a voiceover could be expected.
[*] Fixed several small issues with UI sounds.

If you read this far, thank you for sticking it out! We hope you enjoy Enshrouded's sixth update. Let us know what you think below, and on Feature Upvote in our Update 6 megathreads, too!
The team at Keen Games.
Source: https://steamstore-a.akamaihd.net/news/externalpost/steam_community_announcements/1799088287989513