September 8, 2026

WeaponsCodex

• Every weapon base belongs to a family (axes, maces, swords, daggers, claws, rapiers, wands, scepters, frost, warstaves) and declares one status: axes bleed, daggers poison, wands shock, scepters ignite, rime fangs chill, maces stun, swords impale, claws frenzy, warstaves riposte. Only the declared status rolls at the base chance — everything else needs a chance affix of the family or a unique. Poison no longer lands from any hit.
• One-handers stack by COUNT (an instance per hit, up to 8 + mastery); two-handers stack by WEIGHT (one instance that grows with the hit's share of the foe's health and is aggravated by every further proc).
• Two-handers hit ×1.35, roll one more affix and count flat adders twice; dual wield off-hand 75% → 60%, haste 15% → 10%. Stored weapons were re-rolled onto the new numbers.
• New bases: the Rune Dagger (deep) and the Warstaff (block without a shield, ripostes after it).
• The stun meter replaces "mauls stun on crit": every hit fills it by its share of the foe's health × the weapon's stun power; a two-hander's stun is heavy. One-handed maces also Daze the foe. Swords Impale: a share of the blow clings to the foe and rides the next five hits. Claws build Frenzy on themselves. Rapiers bank crit chance with every miss.

Ailments

• Wound and Blight: every bleed / poison you land puts a stack on the foe that strengthens that DoT, fading one a second. Bleeds on a foe under any other status tick harder.
• New affixes: Bleed and Poison Multiplier (a layer over Increased Damage over Time), Ailment Duration, Ailment Speed, Damage vs Afflicted, Aggravation, Chaos Damage and Phys as Extra Chaos. Bleed / Poison / Ignite / Shock Chance are back on items, gated by weapon family.
• Poison rolls off the physical + chaos part of the blow; chaos damage bypasses armor and the elemental resists.

Elements

• Fire, Lightning and Cold Penetration subtract from the foe's resistance, and every ignite, shock or chill you land adds a stack of Exposure to that element. A resistance can now be pushed below zero.
• A critical hit always applies the weapon's declared elemental status.
• Shock, chill and freeze follow the weight of the hit: a heavier blow shocks harder, slows more and freezes longer. Ailment Effect scales all three. Ignite gets its own Multiplier.
• Phys-as-Extra conversions read the physical after Increased Damage, and the converted part takes its element's mastery. Increased Elemental Damage is a new % only the elements take.
• Lightning rolls ±40% per hit — its shock reads the roll.

Physical

• Armor now follows the weight of the blow: a heavy hit gets through it, a chip hit meets more of it. Overwhelm strips points off the foe's armor, and every stun or impale release leaves Crush on it.
• Rage: every physical blow you land builds it (two-handers twice), for damage and attack speed; it fades once you stop hitting. Fortify: landing heavy blows shields you for a few seconds.
• Double Damage Chance, Culling Strike, Impale Effect, Stun Power and Increased Physical Damage are new affixes.
• Life Steal now arrives over two seconds instead of at once; Life per Hit stays instant.

Tank

• Retaliation: with Retaliation Effect (or a warstaff) a block, a dodge, an absorbed hit or a heavy blow taken strikes back on its own — damage bought with defense, no swing needed.
• Recoup heals a share of every hit taken back over four seconds. Shield Damage adds a share of your shield's defense to every swing.
• Guard Effect arms a shell that rises against a heavy blow. Ward is a new flat pool that eats hits before the barrier and refills when you are left alone.
• Maximum Resistances lifts the 75% cap. Increased Maximum Health and Health Regeneration % are new.

The bestiary

• Monsters have archetypes now, read off their names: Brutes, Imps, Wights, Mages, Wraiths, Knights, Golems, Fiends and Heralds each carry their own defenses and their own way of hurting you — a Knight blocks and strikes back, an Imp poisons, a Mage carries the zone's element whole, a Herald hexes.
• Each zone has an element. The random per-fight mix is gone: you can read what a zone throws and dress for it.
• Thirteen new monster affixes each answer one way of building: Unwoundable, Sealed, Suppressing, Steadfast, Thick-skinned, Draining, Piercing, Overwhelming, Corrupting, Enraged, Retaliating, Withering, Sundering, Exposing, Lucky. No monster carries more than one of the four that switch a school off, and bosses never do.
• The bosses of the Land of the Dead have signatures, a phase at half health and Enrage: a boss fight that drags past 25 seconds gets harder every second.

Fifty-five new uniques

• One for every new axis, each bending a rule the affixes can only scale: Gutter's Coil, Crimson Signet, Rupture Helm, Amulet of First Blood, Gorehound Grips, Wound Salt and Butcher's Ledger for blood; Fangs of the Basilisk, Sin-Eater's Cowl, Viper's Tongue, Plaguebearer's Urn, Toxicist's Band, Chains of Slow Rot and Coralito's Vial for venom; Scorchbrand, Mantle of Ash, Kindling Cord, Stormcaller's Die, Sapping Coil, Heart of the Broken Storm, Conductive Grips, Brittle Crown, Bonechill Wraps, Winterweight, Equilibrium Band, Overload Signet, Inevitable Judgement and Oakheart Vial for the elements; Sunderfang, Kongor's Silence, Marohi's Weight, Starforged Edge, Soul Taker, Terminus, Fortress Heart, Girdle of the Unflinching, Boots of the Unwavering, Warbanner of the Pit, Bane of Legends, Pact Ring and Lucky Gauntlets for the physical school; Aurora Bulwark, The Surrender, Dawnbreaker, Glancing Plate, Vengeful Horn, Loreweave Robe, Petrified Heart, Amulet of Defiance, Crab Carapace, Gruthkul's Pelt, Iron Grip, Blood Price Cord, Wall of Brambles and Unrelenting Sigil for the tank.
• Scorch, Sap and Brittle are alternative ailments: no burn, no amp, no lock, but a resistance cut, a weaker foe, a crit chance against it.

Elements and hands

• Bows and quivers are gone. A bow you owned is a greataxe now; quivers left the bag.
• Elemental weapons hit as hard as their physical siblings: the old discount for bypassing armor is over now that physical meets armor by the weight of the blow and the elements pay resist mods. Resist mods are +35 instead of +45, shock amps up to 35%, Exposure cuts 5% per stack.

No one-shots

• No single source of damage — a hit, a burst, a retaliation — takes more than 25% of a monster's health, or 20% of a boss's; a damage-over-time tick takes at most 50% (40%). And everything a monster takes within one second is bounded at 30% of its health (bosses 20%), so a fast build cannot do in one second what a heavy one cannot: a fight at your own depth lasts about three seconds even for a finished build, and the monster gets to swing. Heroes are never capped, nor is the arena.
• The cap's clock is your weapon's. A base that lands one hit in 1.9 seconds may take 1.9 × 25% in that blow and 1.9 × 30% in its window, up to two seconds: the same share a second a dagger pair spends in four hits. Before this a maul got half a dagger's budget, and the two-hander's one edge, the heavy blow, was the thing the caps threw away.

Sets are builds now

• Resonance: every affix on a set piece is 8% stronger for each other piece of the same set you wear — a full six is +40% on all six items, before the 2 / 4 / 6 bonuses. An ancient used to lose to any unique one for one; a set pays in slots and gets numbers that beat a unique from four pieces on.
• Nine uniques carried a whole build on one slot and have been reined in. Girdle of Iron Will and Plume of the Ashborn no longer erase a killing blow: they leave you at 25% / 35% health and the rest of the blow arrives over 3 / 5 seconds — kill or out-heal it. Gravewalker Greaves halve the first hit instead of dodging it. Veins of the Martyr tick twice a second at 65% each. Godspark crits 40% of the time against a Shocked foe, not always. Veil of the First Sin keeps the guaranteed crit and loses its +50%. Blood Price Cord +50% → +35%, Band of Borrowed Time 50% → 30% faster, Amulet of First Blood ×3 → ×2.

The venom pass

• Poison is the assassin's game now: chance to 100%, many stacks, a multiplier on top, and two daggers fast enough that the stacks never fade. Poison Chance rolls 18% (was 12%) and on the amulet too — two daggers, gloves, ring and amulet reach 100% with the base 20%. Poison Multiplier rolls 20%. Poison holds 10 stacks (was 8), and a new affix, Poison Stacks (+2 each on weapon, ring, amulet, trinket), buys more room.
• Venom Tempo: a dagger wielder swings 2% faster for every poison on the foe, up to +20%; two daggers dual wield at +25% haste instead of +10%.
• Toxic Rupture no longer fires on its own at the sixth stack (it threw the brew away and capped every poison build at five stacks). It is the Plaguewright's six-piece bonus: at the cap a new poison detonates two seconds of the whole brew and keeps half of it.
• Venom weakens and blinds: a poisoned monster hits 1.5% softer for every poison on it, up to 30%, and misses 2% more per poison, up to 40% — the venom build's answer to a foe that would otherwise kill it while the brew works. The off-hand dagger's poison rolls off its blow at full strength, not the off-hand's 60%: the second fang is as venomous as the first.
• Poison seeps through a barrier and lands off the blow before armor: a Mage's shell and a Golem's plate no longer make a dagger harmless.
• Thorned monsters tax the time you spend swinging, not the number of hits: a dagger pair pays the same thorns per second as a greatsword.

Ancient sets

• Every Ancient now belongs to a set: five rolled affixes plus one fixed for its slot, and bonuses when you wear 2, 4 and 6 pieces. Seventeen sets: Gorewright's Regalia, The Red Waltz, Plaguewright's Vestments, Basilisk's Mantle, Vestments of the Slow Rot, Pyre of the Ashborn, Stormwright's Regalia, Vestments of the Ninth Circle, Prismatic Vestments, Berserker's Regalia, Champion's Panoply, Slayer's Trophies, Juggernaut's Bulwark, Bulwark of the Deep, Crab King's Shell, Pantheon of Flesh and Aurora Vestments.
• A set is not a unique: you may wear a full set beside your uniques, and what it buys is a rule change that costs slots. Ancients you already own have joined a set.
• Auto-salvage never burns a piece of a set you are wearing.

Under-levelled

• Gear has a reach now. A monster deeper than 1.35× your mean item level + 100 carries (depth / (item level × 1.35 + 100))^3 health, shell and damage: gear from depth 1000 is untouched to 1450, ×1.9 at 1800, ×2.6 at 2000, ×5.1 at 2500, and a finished suit walls around 2700 instead of 6000–7000. The first 150 depths never see it, and a player wearing what drops never sees it at all — his gear runs at 80–90% of the depth he stands on, and the rule starts past 135%. Drops always rolled at the depth you fight, so the answer to the wall is on the floor of the last fight. The fight log says so on its first line. Not in the arena, where gear is levelled, and not on a raid boss.

The content answers back

• Five affixes that switch a school off. Bloodless cannot bleed, Inert cannot be poisoned, Ashen cannot be ignited; Ethereal takes 60% less from hits and double from damage over time, Dense the mirror. They are written on the depth's card before you go in, one per monster, and unlike the older seals they ride bosses too — a gate every hundred depths should ask a question.
• Enrage. Every monster's blows grow 8% a second past the sixth, without end. A fight you cannot finish finishes you: that is what turns an affix you have no answer to into a wall instead of a delay.
• Loot. Rarity now improves over a million depths instead of ten thousand: Mythic or better is 3% of drops at depth 1,000, 17% at 20,000, 48% at 100,000. Uniques drop at 0.5% a kill with pity at 200 and 500 kills, and monster affixes pay about half the extra loot they used to. A finished set of uniques used to take about 400 kills.

Charge and Arc

• Lightning has its own stack. Every hit that carries lightning puts a Charge on the foe, two if it is Shocked, and banks the lightning it dealt; at ten Charges the next lightning hit Arcs, and the banked lightning lands again at once, ×1.5, scaled by Ailment Effect and Lightning Mastery. Charges fade one a second. Fire had its ignites, venom its brew, cold its freeze; lightning had a shock amp and one build in the top 24.

Chaos answers like a school

• Chaos Resistance rolls 18% on nine slots, the same as Fire, Lightning and Cold — it used to roll 12% on four, so capping it took every slot that could carry it while capping fire took four of nine. Poison, the Corrupting affix and the wraiths all deal chaos: it is a school's worth of damage and it can be answered like one now.
• All Resistances is called Elemental Resistances, which is what it has always been — it folds into fire, lightning and cold and never touched chaos.

Ceilings

• Six stats have a top now, and it shows on the sheet: Attack Speed 40% (Tempo Mastery adds up to 20 above it), Critical Chance 50%, Critical Damage 150%, Increased Damage 150%, Increased Physical and Increased Elemental 100% each. A finished suit's damage is the product of these, and without a top on the product no monster lives past its first swing. Your items keep their rolls; what is over the top does nothing.
• Dual wielding swings 30% faster (two daggers 45%) and blocks 25% of hits with the second weapon: its haste multiplies after the ceiling and is what a dual wielder is.
• The damage-over-time layer has the same tops: Increased Damage over Time 100%, Bleed / Poison / Ignite Multiplier 100% each. The first run without them put poison in 22 of the top 24 builds. Plaguebearer's Urn lands two seconds of every stack at ten, ×1.5, instead of the whole brew — with duration on it the whole brew was forty health bars in one blow.

Longer fights

• Monsters carry 80% more health and deal 70% of the damage, the same curve. With gear that ages, a fight at twice your item level runs 5 seconds on a two-hander, 3.6 with a shield, 2 with a dagger pair; at two and a half times, 10 / 5 / 3. Fights at your own depth with finished gear stay short — the first swing decides them — and a player wearing what drops climbs faster than before: the damage cut is worth more to them than the health costs.

The caps are gone

• Since September 8 a monster could lose at most a quarter of its health to one source and 30% in one second, later on the weapon's own clock. Both are gone: a hit is a hit. Measured with gear that ages (the rule above), the caps changed nothing from twice your item level on and only stretched own-depth fights for finished suits from one to three seconds. Fights at your own depth are short now; the ones that matter are deeper, where your gear is behind.

Hand parity

• A dual wielder blocks 15% of hits with the second weapon: the parry is the dual wielder's scale-free layer, as block is the shield's and Stagger the two-hander's. Stagger is 20% softer and 20% slower now; Heavy Blow rolls 50 per line.
• Measured on four seed sets per weapon base: two-handers and dual wielders now stand level (means 4,782 and 4,665; bests 6,057 and 5,994). A one-hander with a shield still leads both by a fifth on the deep push — its block cap — while in the game as played the three wall within 6% of each other.

Heavy Blow

• A new two-hander affix (weapon, gloves, bracers, belt; it rolls only on two-handed bases): every hit is larger by its percent for each second of your swing beyond the first, and each roll takes 16% off attack speed. Four rolls on a maul with no haste: a 1.9-second swing, blows almost three times as large. Haste shrinks it — it is the opposite build.
• The monster caps follow the swing harder: a hit may take 25% of the bar times the SQUARE of your cadence window, so a blow once in 1.9 seconds may take 90%, a blow once a second still 25%. A Heavy Blow maul kills at its own depth in two blows and 2.5 seconds; the hasted maul takes four blows and 4.3. The monster still swings twice.
• What used to be counted per hit is counted per second of swinging: bleed, poison, ignite, shock and impale chances roll at your cadence (a 1.9-second blow at 1.9×), life on hit heals by it, Rage grows by it. A slow weapon procs and builds as often over a minute as a fast one.

The weight of a two-hander

• Heft never falls under what the base's own swing sets: 0.5 × (swing − 1 s), so a maul's one bleed is at least +45% at any depth. Heft off the hit's share of the foe's health fell to about +20% by three times your item level, while a dagger's ten poisons stayed ten poisons; the two-handers held 5.6–6.0k on four seed sets against 7.0–8.2k for the best one-handers.
• Staggered: a monster hit by a two-hander hits 15% softer and swings 15% slower for two seconds — the weight law's defensive layer, one flat number where the count law earns its layer per stack. Fixed two-hander builds +2–18%, one-handers untouched; the re-searched two-hander bases moved from a mean of 5,090 to 5,717, above a same-base dual wield and a tenth under a shield.

Exsanguinated and Numbed

• Blood and lightning get the defensive layer venom and cold already had. A wounded monster hits 3% softer and swings 3% slower per Wound on it, up to 30% each; a shocked monster swings slower by three quarters of its shock amp, up to 30%. Monsters only. Once the set bases held the blood sets to bleeding they fell to 3,750–4,000 while the venom sets stood at 6,800: a foe under Weakens and Blinds hit the venom suits for 10–39% of their health at 2–3× depth, the blood suits for 52–88%. With the layer Red Waltz searches to 6,167 and Gorewright to 5,429.

Item bases

• A set is a silhouette now. Every set has one armor class and a fixed base for each of its slots — Gorewright's Regalia is a greataxe, a shade mask, serrated grips, a sash, a signet and an agony vial, all medium; Aurora is cloth from circlet to slippers. Three of a set piece's six affixes are fixed: two of its school's own and the set's, three roll free. Ancients drop from depth 35, where every set base is open.
• Twenty-seven of the school uniques that dropped on any base of their slot now have one: Crimson Signet is a signet, Coralito's Vial an agony vial, Winterweight a heavy girdle.
• Your stored set pieces and those uniques move to their bases in place, keeping depth, quality and their other affixes; a set piece that lacked its school lines gets them in place of its first free ones.

Battle

• Bought fight frames now show on every device. The window is painted into the scene itself, and the scene fills the frame edge to edge on every set.
• The combat log keeps its bottom band on every hit, on iOS and Android.
• Streamed fights play on the sim's clock: the swing lands, the number follows. No stutter, and no burst of hits when the fighters meet.

Guild raids

• The raid boss now has a body: ten zone bosses of its tier. Effects that deal a share of the target's max health (the Ash Rain, the Avalanche shatter) read that body, not the guild's whole weekly pool. One wearer no longer outweighs the roster, and everyone else's damage registers on the bar again.
• A pool sized under the old rules is re-measured the next time anyone in the guild opens the raid, keeping the share already torn off. A pool can no longer stand above what a full week of attempts could supply.
• Raid caches are claimed onto the loot haul instead of being dropped into the bag. The cards come out the way a fight's drops do: auto-salvage burns first, then the deal, with Equip, Keep and Salvage on each card. A claim takes what the haul has room for and keeps the rest owed.

Guilds

• The roster shows how long since each member was last seen — 2m, 1h, 1d, 1w, 1M — or Online while they are on.

Bag

• Copies of the same item share one row. Swipe the row sideways to leaf through them — or drag it with a mouse, click the fanned edge behind the card, or tap the pip tag, which says which of how many you are looking at. A row stands where its first copy falls in the sort, and every copy keeps its own salvage rail, lock and build tags.
• A new A–Z sort, by item name. Tap it again for Z–A.

Settings

• A new free Quality of Life switch, Tap to salvage: Salvage and Replace & Salvage fire on a tap instead of a hold. Bulk burns in the bag keep their hold.

ArenaCodex

• The At Arena Scale preview shows the rarity frames on each slot again.

Looks

• The Frost Damned font is slightly smaller, so labels no longer wrap onto two rows.

Codex

• Guilds: the raid boss row describes its body, and the raid cache row says the cards go to the loot haul.