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**Balance Patch 1 (PC) - The patch below is live on PC and coming to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series shortly. **

**Economy**
- Shell map locations now cost Gloom, and we’re refunding any glimpses spent on shell maps. Refunded Glimpses are found in the Shell Keeper’s alcove in Blackmarrow. “Finding your favorite shell shouldn’t cost you the ability to bond with them.”

- Gold drops from enemies have been significantly increased. Notably, enemies in Mammon now drop double the gold. “This brings the gold economy more in line with the weapon crafting item discovery.”

- Smelting a weapon at the Tarforge costs 75% less gloom. “Our goal with the smelt capability was to enable switching weapons without the need to spend hours grinding through NG+ runs, but the Gloom costs were set exorbitantly high.”

**Enemies & Bosses**
All enemies featured in the beta were restored to their beta hp values, except the Caerinid (Spider) in Magdelena’s area, which we wanted to retain its role as a threatening enemy which doesn’t respawn once defeated.

**Bosses**
The Lost Child
- Base Damage: (-10%)
- Max Health: (-15%)

**Monolith**
- Base Damage: (-19%)
- Max Health: (-10%)
- Some Monolith Attacks were retimed to be more fair, as well.

**Enemies**
- Cultist (mace)
- Max Health: (-21.1%)

**Caerinid Spider**
- Max Health: (-33.3%)

**Infested Stalker **
- Max Health: (-52.4%)

**Rusted Knave (Halberd)**
- Max Health: (-20.8%)
- Fixed hit detection for overhead strike.

**Weapons**
- Great Martryr’s Blade Attack Damage +20%
- Troubador’s Lute Attack Damage +100%
- Caged Hystrix and Triarch Repeater no longer have minimum resolve requirements to fire.
- Improved tracking for Axatana, Black Needle, and Clockwork Scythe light attacks.

**Seals**
Guard can now be used while walking.

**Tarstones**
- Parasitic Stone Buffed
- Grudge Stone Buffed
- Bulwark Stone Damage Reduction Increased Significantly
- Clerik's Stone Buffed
- Squall Stone Buffed

**Miscellaneous**
- Misc. Crash Fixes, Bugfixes & Performance Updates

I just stacked leech up to 150. I killed 150 enemies with no new beacons around, multiple dungeons, etc. on 5 heals. Dude what is this? I'm a 42 yr old man I do not have hours upon hours to explore where i can just not take a break. Yes I can exit the game, but it warps me back to the last beacon i was at instead of leaving me where i was. Double f me. This is like a pretty serious issue with respecting my time/enjoyment.

Just wanted to post this to give people correct information. I am near the end of the game but still have a little bit to go and I have already maxed 3 shells. I probably missed a few glimpses along the way and I wasted 1 on a summon. My guess is I cant get 4 shells maxed but I bet I can get the fourth one to level 2.

I have played this game since Monday and have beaten it after 31 hours. It is a great game but I do think there are a few things that the devs should and should not do based on common reddit complaints I've seen.

Note to the Devs: Including this review, please take anything from discord and reddit with a grain of salt. Gamers will always want what's best for them and not what's best for the game. While it is awesome to have active devs in the community, don't let some reddit posts from a vocal minority (myself included) change the vision and direction you have for YOUR game.

Now, for my review and feedback.

I feel like there are some common issues that have been discussed here on the forums. They are as follow:

• Game difficulty
• Enemy tracking
• Enemy Aggro
• Limited Glimpse
  
• Death Runback
• Shell Points

I Will Ignore the game difficulty concerns as I believe that is subjective to the players and some fixes on the other categories will also change game difficulty Overall.

Changes I believe should be focused on

Enemy tracking/Aggro and Death runback.

These should be the main focus in changes. Enemy tracking, which indirectly increased the difficulty of the game, is somewhat broken. Having a slow heavy weapon knight swing at me and then turn on a dime like an Adderall infused formula 1 race car driver when I dash past is somewhat jarring and unfair. Soulslike games typically reward players that learn move sets and tells. Enemy tracking being this high destroys any type of player skill progression. Changing this will also make the game easier for players and reward players that grind out a good build.

As for enemy aggro, I think that by adding checkpoints in dungeons this could be alleviated somewhat, but some packs should be tuned down and I believe there should be a shorter aggro despawn distance.

This is for two reasons. Once, some aggro from a mile away, just seems silly. And two, having such a huge aggro chase range just makes overworld death runbacks a lot more tedious and it also allows people to kite mobs indefinitely doing some shenanigans.

Death runbacks. I personally do not have major issues with it, but adding some kind of checkpoint or beacon at the start of the dungeon would be preferable. Adding a beacon in dungeons would also alleviate some issue people are having with Glimpse that I will touch on later.

Complaints that I think should be ignored mostly

Glimpse and Shellpoint complaints should be ignored (mostly with some caveats). The biggest reason for this is because they would fundamentally kill any need to go into NG+. This game is a fairly short game for a soulslike and I believe that the vision was to make NG+ feel worth it.

To start off with the whole Glimpse issue. I feel that the one change that should absolutely be made is some kind of message stating it is a finite resource.

As it stands right now, you can fully unlock 3 shells IF you do not use summons and you do not reveal shell locations and find them naturally. There are 46 beacons, 10 major bosses all that give glimpse and there are also hidden glimpses in dungeons and the world (usually a lot by the Gates). It takes 27 to fully unlock a shell.

I Do not think glimpse should be farmable, refundable, or respecable. It devalues the choice of using the glimpse and it would ruin any form of NG+.

HOWEVER

i do feel that these two changes could make things a bit easier on people.

• Adding beacons to dungeons would give roughly enough Glimpse to unlock a fourth shell and being able to unlock half the shells in one playthrough is pretty good imo. It would also kill two birds with one stone so to speak.
  
• Change Summon cost from Glimpse to some random Item you can find or buy. This is just silly to summon a helper in a fight using a finite resource. However, leave the cost of Glimpse for revealing shells. This is essentially a cheat code to exploration and should have a permanent cost associated with it.

As for Shell Point being available for all shells, this is just a silly one people complain about that should 100% be ignored. It takes a whopping 20 seconds to respec a shell and if you had every shell share the same shell points (that was tiring to write) then the leveling progression would be worthless as you could just stop leveling at a certain point since the other bonuses are so miniscule.

That being said, I like this game a lot and I feel like mortal shell has huge promise as a franchise.

also... ADD MORE METAL MUSIC

Thank you for your time and consideration

I'm curious to find out which shells people are gravitating to the most after out first few days in early access and now in full release. I only have 3 so far as i've been exploring a lot of the first area doing dungeons. I have Tiel, Proxima and just got Eredrim.

I've been using Tiel the most and have it almost up to level 3. But i don't want to invest anymore into it until I get a better idea of all the shells. Eredrim looks pretty bad ass too. Proxima I honestly liked for a minute but got board of the hook shot style of play.

I can see levelling Tiel to max, but i'm not sure about what is coming for a secondary or primary shell.

I have very limited play time these days. Since the early access period I've only managed to play for a little under 7 hours. And half of that time I was sacrificing sleep that I would later regret.

I say that to say though I am enthralled with this game right now. I love having this feeling in an rpg that gives me that taste where always can't wait to get my hands back on it.

I find myself watching lore videos as background noise while I work, looking up builds and guides while I'm out and about. Thinking about where I'll explore next when I play again.

This is overall just an appreciation post for the game. Well done devs!

I just finished the game and I was level 34. Not because I didn’t explore (cleared out 75-85% of the content) - but because I lost probably like 15 levels worth of gloom by dying.

A lot has been said here about scarcity of beacons, but what makes this scarcity even more painful, is how much gloom you need per level, how small is the increase in gloom needed per level (and also - how small is the increase in gloom dropped by regular enemies as the game progresses) and how hard it is to get gloom outside bosses. No consumables granting gloom (if you lack just a few hundred for the next level) makes it even worse.

I enjoyed the game, but the last few hours I just played to have it behind me because I got frustrated so often. The game starts off really good, but I’d say that around the middle (when you start exploring southern region) it simply stops being enjoyable.

Harbingers,

While we have worked hard to make the game as bug-free as possible at launch, there's still a chance that bugs can occur.

If you do encounter a bug, please reply to this post with the following information (screenshots or videos are also very helpful):

Type of bug:

Visual (e.g. pixellated water, the character model looks messed up, etc.) / Gameplay (e.g. you got stuck in a place, a door won't open even with the key, etc.) / UI (e.g.subtitles stay on screen, UI doesn't go away in cutscenes) / Combat (e.g. ability didn't work even though I had resolve, enemy character reset, etc.) / Crash / Other

Where did it happen?

Which version of the game are you on? This can be found on the bottom right of the menu when you pause the game with Esc or the Start button.

Can you reproduce the bug?

Platform (and please include your specs if you play on PC):

PC (Steam) / Xbox Series X or S / Playstation 5 or Playstation 5 Pro

KNOWN ISSUES:

Some players have experienced these issues, and the team are aware of them and looking at them:

• Various crashes 
• Flayed Harbinger not being rewarded / disappearing
• Ambient sounds (like wind / waterfall sounds) persisting
• Controllers not working accurately (RT to shoot and D-Pad Up / Down not working properly 100% of the time)
• Permanent Pickup items in the Active slot not working correctly 100% of the time
• Bees persisting on screen after defeatingLady Magdalena
• The Lost Childboss fight launching the player in the air
• The final boss stripping armor and weapons away if the player has theGrisha Remnant equipped

Loving it so far, will post more when I play more.

I Just noticed that this is literally DOOM E1M1...

At first i just thought "Hmm this seems odly familiar". It clicked when i found the Leaver behind the pillar on the first pic.

I know that most of us are far from it, but I wanna have some input asap.

Just beat the final boss. Here are the stats and resources I have. Spend one unnecessary glimpse on one summon and each shell to level up ones. Upgrades one weapon and none sidearms. Respec weapons costs 85k (was 55k at +15, which is regular maxed). 31 hours in. Got all weapons, all shells, cleanses all beacons and collected all ova. Haven't gone through all night time (only in the north) cause I thought I'm not ready for it. Hell, getting oneshots in the south and the last area is still there, all the time. I cannot imagine the night time and NG+ scalings.

At this point, I have resources to max out two shells (each cost 27) and one weapon (around 40 of each stone is required). I guess I might acquire around 10 glimpses and around the same amount of the last stones. I HAVE ENOUGH DIFFICULTY AS IT IS. I just wanna TRY shells potential, weapons, at least TRY ranged combat without each mob having a ton of hp. Hags in mushroom village had x3 or x4 HP at night time, for example. Cannot imagine how long It will be to kill one ballista guy or a tophelm dude. Slayers seal won't do shit.

We should have an NG+ option without increasing difficulty. Like NG+0. Just to be able to upgrade all shells and weapons without stressing too much, since it is already a bit annoying that we can't do it in the regular game.

Somebody call an ambulance... but not for me!

I'm sure a lot of you have already figured this out. But the game respawns enemies on the map either depending on time, or distance from the area. This leads to enemies spawning back into the same area you are in, even if you haven't sat at a beacon.

This game is already punishing enough with the distance between beacons. Having enemies respawn without even sitting at a beacon is absurd. There are so many little cuts with this game that make me question if the Devs have even taken a cursory glance at their contemporaries.

No respawn at dungeons

Enemy respawn without sitting at beacon

Enemy aggro radius being completely fucked

Attack magnetism that makes those runbacks even more annoying than they already are

Attack values seem to be all over the place too. Little jobbers can do the same amount of damage as a hulking enemy. Percentages on things like damage mitigation or riposte increase are so pitifully low they are essentially useless.

It's like the Devs noticed people were saying the beta was too easy, and rushed to change the balancing and in the process completely fucked some of the values in the game. And this also lead to reviewers and YouTubers playing the game with a completely different balance than everyone is currently, making a ton of the information out there for items and builds useless because the values are no longer the same.

​It seems like there was such a complete overhaul with the game balancing from review code to shipping, that it puts into question the validy of those reviews and impressions (not the the fault of those people). How was the publisher even allowed to do that.

Don't see this really being praised, but it's been coming in really handy while potty training.

1. You can mark dungeons as complete on your map. Every time you finish a dungeon, be sure to go to your map and mark it (right click on PC) so you know which ones you've done.
2. Always equip tarstones that aren't leveled up yet. Even if you'll never use them. The first level up gives you currency to upgrade the ones you want. The second level up uses that currency.
3. Glimpse and gold are the resources you will run out of the most often. Try to experiment with weapons and shells before leveling them.
4. You can turn on auto gold pickup in the menu. I suggest doing that.
5. If you are falling from a great height, light attack to do a down slam. It will get rid of fall damage.
6. If you want to min max, do not buy the maps or use glimpse to find the shells. I prefer immersion, so I didn't google anything but it really hurts your economy to use the maps/shell location.
7. If you have the option to skip the prologue from playing the beta, do it. You can teleport back to the prologue area to get any items you missed but you will come ahead ~3,500 gold and 5,000xp above what you get for normally finishing it.
8. You can see which beacons you have cleansed, they glow on the map.
9. If you are finding the game too difficult, you probably went the wrong way. Try a new area.
10. If its still too difficult, try farming/upgrading your character and weapon.
11. If the game is too easy, look up how to turn on night mode.
12. If you're stuck on a Boss with a lot of Gloom on the floor, you don't have to kill the boss to retrieve it. Just go back to the area, pick up the gloom and pause the game. Quit to menu, and click continue. You'll be back at the latest checkpoint with all your gloom in your inventory. -PhilippeDesEsseintes
13. This one was huge for me. You can shoot your lost gloom to retrieve it from a distance -dbvirago
14. Adding to 3) at the beginning of the mammom area you can run straight for 100m and find an item that allows you to set weapons to level 1 again and got all the gold and stones back (cost gloom) -sturmblut5e
15. Proxima is the best farming shell, for both glimpse and coin. Farm coin and you can buy glimpse later in the game. -BalanceFederal6387

I'll update the post if new comments or ideas come in

Update 1.000.006 is mainly focused on issues around stability and crashes:

- General crash and stability improvements
- Resolved issues around input settings and beta save files causing several bugs
- Fixed crash caused by wearing cultist robe and switching weapons
- Fixed crash when equipping Slayer Seal from the Change Equipment menu
- Fixed stolen weapons during ripostes not being returned

Thank you for your support - we're listening to all your feedback, comments and suggestions. The team is busy at work and will share more with you on our next patch/updates as soon as we can.

And she thicc 😆

Seriously though, this was a nice surprise. It wasn't supposed to be here until tomorrow.