Demo 2.1 Patch Notes

2026-09-18 · by Shay · Announcements

Blessings from the five angels—Michael, Selaphiel, Uriel, Galiliel, and Remiel—now look and behave more distinctly by level and star rank. 3-star blessings have unique hit effects.

Reworked projectile targeting and hit behavior, duration bonuses, Love Flare projectiles, and the Viral Toxicity ground field.

Blessing effects now use a semi-transparent halftone treatment, with adjustable transparency in Options.

Added a separate Blessing SFX volume setting and lowered blessing sound volume overall.
Optimized several Galiliel, Uriel, and Remiel blessing effects.
Rewrote all blessing descriptions to match their actual behavior, with separate Autocast / Light Attack / Heavy Attack / Dash descriptions in nine languages.

Elites can now carry Light Attack, Heavy Attack, or Dash links. Pick up a link and bind a blessing to that action to activate its specialized behavior.

Implemented and tuned link-specific behaviors for Michael’s Radiant Edge, Enduring Aegis, Righteous Bladefall, and Celestial Ripper, as well as blessings from Uriel, Galiliel, and Remiel.
Converting a link into EXP at Shay now awards the EXP directly, without requiring manual shard pickup.
Fixed a soft-lock when a level-up appeared over the link selection screen.
Elites carrying links now drop them when defeated by execute or instant-kill effects.
Fixed Rumbling Crescendo’s Heavy Attack link not triggering on the Hammer’s level 1 charge attack.
Replaced minimap link icons with gear symbols that indicate the link type.

Improved its hit and death animations, collider, hit effects, sounds, and knockback.
Attacking the dummy now displays damage numbers.

Options & Controls

Added options for Boss/Sub-boss outlines, Elite outlines, Blessing effect transparency, and Flash reduction.

Flash Counter now always follows the Light Attack binding.
Changes to the monster HP display option now apply immediately.
Removed controller rumble from attacks that miss and refined rumble behavior and shotgun recoil.

Combat Feedback

Added missing hit flashes to Sword Heavy Attack, Gauntlet overheat, and Shotgun light attacks, and adjusted their colors.
Restored boss invincibility visuals and standardized sub-boss attack telegraph timing.
Fixed characters being incorrectly occluded in certain situations.
Fixed the character running in place during popups or cutscenes.

Guides & Text

Reorganized the Combo Guide into a unified three-weapon format and updated it for the Hammer’s Catapult follow-up.
Renamed 78 Arcana and reviewed their descriptions; added initial translations for 17 new Arcana descriptions.
Standardized Shrine, Relic, and Arbor terminology across languages and cleaned up Codex Item tab terminology.
Fixed typos in Lumi and Remiel dialogue.
Replaced the demo ending popup text with the Early Access notice.

Survey

Combat & Weapons

Hammer: Holding after a heavy attack now chains into the Catapult follow-up. Fixed charging getting stuck or causing the character to walk in place.
Shotgun: The full-combo finisher now fires forward and backward. Reworked special attack direction and the Light Attack 4 camera.
Fixed overlapping shotgun pellets inflating damage against a single target.
Fixed Righteous Bladefall’s main-weapon hits breaking elite super armor.

Arbor Enhancements

Fixed Vigorous Charge increasing dash distance instead of dash attack damage. The damage bonus now uses stamina before the dash cost is deducted, allowing a full-stamina dash to receive the intended maximum bonus.

Arbor Crucible

Fixed pressing the controller Start button on the challenge setup screen unintentionally starting a run before setup was complete, which could cause immediate death.
The 1-damage-per-second pact no longer applies a damage tick when the player has 1 HP or less.
Fixed Sword leaderboard entries appearing in reverse order when reopening the leaderboard.
Corrected the Shotgun leaderboard icon, which previously displayed the Gauntlet icon.
Improved stability during Crucible runs: in non-development builds, an error in one skill no longer stalls the entire skill update loop.

Progression, Unlocks & NPCs

Fixed content unlocking out of order in repeat acts.
Fixed Codex NPC entries failing to unlock. Entries for NPCs already encountered are now unlocked retroactively.
Fixed the front-gate cutscene playing when arriving through the back elevator.
Fixed leftover Prologue A tutorial and combo-guide cutscenes, along with the Lucain cutscene image sequence.
Separated NPC approach distance from dialogue break-off distance.
Fixed Haniel’s dialogue HUD, NPC positions after events, and the delay in Ariella’s Baphomet dialogue.
Fixed Lumi’s random dialogue playing before her introduction.
Improved the Welcome Golem presentation, Marimo cutscenes and placement, and overlapping tower-stacked Marimo.

Graphics, Sound & Optimization

Added screen-space reflections to water in the Prologue and Act 1 boss arena.
Fog now changes with the Sanctuary’s time of day.
Fixed Sanctuary leaves, elephant water ripples, and the rain shader.
Cleaned up the character VAT shader and dither texture, expanded GPU instancing, and restored missing Act 1 environment materials.
Adjusted Shotgun SFX volume and removed duplicate playback.
Fixed audio channels overflowing during rapid sound playback.

Crashes & Stability

Fixed a crash on the first currency pickup caused by an internal reference being included in save data.
Fixed quit handling to prevent intermittent crashes after long sessions.
Fixed camera and UI errors as cutscenes ended, errors involving the suppressor invincibility effect and player HUD, and death effects persisting beyond their scene.

Temporarily Unavailable

Tags: ember-and-blade, patch-notes