Bow-only archers, a combat overhaul and a painted world

🏹Archers#

Play a true archer, with just a bow. A bow can't shoot anything within 5 m of you. Until now, once an enemy reached you an archer could only wait, so archers carried daggers to fight back up close. Now a bow on its own has the tools to keep its distance.

• Hobble (Dexterity 7): your next arrow flies at once and leaves the target Crippled, 40% slower, for 3 seconds. 15 second cooldown.
• Disengage (Dexterity 20): leap 6 m straight back, keeping your target. One leap takes a melee enemy past your bow's 5 m, and your next arrow is ready. 20 second cooldown.
• Both cost no mana, and both go on keys 2 and 3 while you hold only a bow. Alwin Snell, Dexterity Trainer, teaches them, by Benny Smith in Alderwic.
• Aimed Shot stays on key 1: a rooted full draw, then one arrow for 300% of a normal shot.
• Bows crit now, more with every tier. Bows had no crit of their own. Now the Birch Bow has 3%, rising to 26% on the Moonwood Bow, and arrows hit harder. The full list is under Combat.

Why: a bow is the weapon that wins by keeping its distance, but nothing let it make that distance. Anything that reached you shut your bow off. Hobble and Disengage give a bow on its own what daggers used to.

⚔️Combat#

Crit rises with your weapon. Daggers, bows and glaives now carry a crit chance that grows with their tier, like their damage does, and your Dexterity level adds a little on top (0.08% a level, was 0.4%). Damage went up to match, so each weapon deals what it did on average.

• Daggers, crit (damage):
  • Goblin Daggers 7% → 3% (136 → 151)
  • Bronze Daggers 7% → 3% (170 → 189)
  • Iron Daggers 7% → 4% (278 → 317)
  • Steel Daggers 8% → 7% (388 → 453)
  • Mithril Daggers 8% → 10% (547 → 645)
  • Ebony Daggers 8% → 13% (685 → 819)
  • Verdite Daggers 8% → 20% (907 → 1,107)
  • Tyrian Daggers 8% → 26% (1,076 → 1,350)
• Bows had no crit of their own. Now: Goblin Bow and Birch Bow 3%, Oak Bow 4%, Willow Bow 7%, Swampwood Bow 10%, Maple Bow 13%, Pine Bow 20%, Moonwood Bow 26%.
• Arrows hit harder: Bronze 219 → 222, Iron 357 → 374, Steel 507 → 534, Mithril 710 → 762, Ebony 887 → 968, Verdite 1,177 → 1,312, Tyrian 1,398 → 1,606.
• Glaives, crit (damage): Bronze 3% (224 → 233), Iron 3% → 4% (379 → 402), Steel 3% → 7% (541 → 575), Mithril 3% → 10% (763 → 819), Ebony 3% → 13% (957 → 1,038), Verdite 3% → 20% (1,291 → 1,411), Tyrian 3% → 26% (1,561 → 1,736).
• Smokefang Daggers now need level 25 (was 31), Varric's own level. Crit 10% → 7%, damage 603 → 551, so they sit with steel. Smoke Step is unchanged.

Why: crit came mostly from your Dexterity level, so a low-tier dagger crit almost as often as a top one. Now crit rises with the weapon's tier, the way damage does, and a unique weapon's edge is its own ability, not extra crit.

Keys 1 to 4 are your combat abilities. The action bar's first four keys sit in their own frame: key 1 is always your Weapon Special, key 4 is always your Weapon Ult, and keys 2 and 3 hold the two abilities you choose: Heal, Ward or one of the new ones below. They stay the same on both bar pages.

• Your bar is rearranged when you log in. Anything else on keys 1 to 4 moves to the first free slot on keys 5 to 0. A Heal or Ward moves onto key 2 or 3 if one is free.
• Mounts, teleports, food and potions go on keys 5 to 0.

Six new abilities for keys 2 and 3, each for the weapons it suits. Two new trainers in Alderwic teach them, and they cost no mana.

• Dash (paired daggers, Dexterity 13): dash to an enemy up to 8 m away and attack it as you land. No damage of its own, and not from inside melee reach. 30 second cooldown.
• Hobble (paired daggers or a bow, Dexterity 7): your next attack goes out at once and leaves the target Crippled, 40% slower, for 3 seconds. 15 second cooldown.
• Disengage (paired daggers, a bow or a glaive, Dexterity 20): leap up to 6 m straight back. You keep your target. 20 second cooldown.
• Brace (greatswords, greataxes, glaives, spears and one-handed weapons, shield or not; Strength 7): for 8 seconds every hit you take loses 15 damage, a little less than a bronze shield blocks. With a shield it adds to the shield's own block. 20 second cooldown.
• Charge (greatsword, greataxe or glaive, Strength 13): rush an enemy up to 8 m away and land a heavy strike for 150% of a weapon hit. It counts as your swing. 30 second cooldown.
• Taunt (shield, Strength 13): an NPC up to 6 m away attacks only you for 4 seconds, and you go to the top of its threat. No damage. 10 second cooldown.
• Alwin Snell, Dexterity Trainer, teaches Dash, Hobble and Disengage. Ordric Strang, Strength Trainer, teaches Brace, Charge and Taunt. They stand together by Benny Smith in Alderwic: talk to them and open Spells.
• Your abilities follow your weapon. Keys 2 and 3 are remembered for each kind of weapon in your main hand: put Dash there while holding daggers and it's back whenever you hold daggers. Each orb school counts as its own kind. An ability your weapon can't use leaves its key empty.
• Every taught spell follows one price curve, set by the level it unlocks at. Most Heal, Ward, Bound Armour and Bound Blade ranks cost more; Bound Armour II and Bound Blade II cost a little less. The full list is below.

Why: each weapon style gets moves that fit it. Dexterity fighters get in and out fast, and Strength fighters are slow in plate, so instead of big leaps they get a short charge, a shield's block and Taunt.

Flurry hits only your target. It no longer sweeps a cone in front of you, and it has no windup: its first strike lands like an attack, so cast right after an attack it gives you three in a row. Its four strikes, cooldown and mana cost are the same.

Why: daggers are the single-target finesse weapon. Sweeping a pack belongs to the heavy weapons' Cleave and Crippling Sweep.

A wasted special comes back. If your target dies before a targeted special or ult goes off, or before its hit lands, you get the whole cooldown back. Mana, HP or arrows you spent stay spent. Ground-aimed ults don't count.

Weapon ults. Your ult is your weapon's big ability, on key 4 with its own long cooldown. Every orb and the Bound Blade has one. Each gathers for 1.5 seconds, and you can't move while it gathers.

• Arcane Surge (plain Arcane orbs): a bolt that spends 40% of your current mana and hits for up to twice an Arcane Blast.
• Pillar of Fire (Fire orbs): the ground erupts in a column of fire on a circle you aim, a second after the gather. It hits everything in the circle and sets it all Burning.
• Frozen Field (Ice orbs): a frozen circle where you aim that hits and Chills everything inside, once a second for 8 seconds.
• Sanguine Burst (Blood Arcane orbs): costs a quarter of your HP instead of mana, hits everything in a circle where you aim and heals you from the damage.
• Shatterblade (Bound Blade): the blade bursts into shards that hit everything around you.
• Bloom (Restoration orbs): heals you and your party nearby four times over 4 seconds. Healing past full becomes a short shield.
• Aim Pillar of Fire, Frozen Field and Sanguine Burst on the ground. Press key 4 and the circle follows your cursor: click to cast it there, or press 4 again. Esc or right-click cancels. You don't need a target, and a spot past your orb's range lands at the edge of range. With Quick cast on, hold key 4 to see the circle and let go to cast.
• Each has a 75 second cooldown, except Bloom at 90. Daggers, bows, glaives, spears, greatswords and greataxes show an empty ult slot for now.

• Ults look like their element. Pillar of Fire cracks the ground with magma before its column of fire, and its sound rumbles up to the eruption. Frozen Field frosts the ground for its whole 8 seconds. Bloom draws its 15 m healing circle in gold around you, with a ribbon to each ally it heals. Sanguine Burst strikes in a ring of blood, Shatterblade cracks and flies apart in shards, and Arcane Surge builds on the target before it bursts.

Why: weapons can carry one big ability on a long cooldown, about twice the special's, as well as their special. Arcane Surge is the biggest single hit; every other ult trades some of that for something else: area, a burn, a slow, healing or HP-paid sustain. Keys 1 to 4 keep your combat abilities in the same place every fight.

Every orb special is a Blast. Fireball is now Fire Blast and Glacial Spike is now Ice Blast. They work as before. Exsanguinate keeps its name.

Ice Blast freezes for 2 seconds (was 3). Why: since Chill got stronger, a 3-second freeze held NPCs, and players hit by an NPC's Ice Orb, in place too long.

Healing Blast replaces Sanctuary. The Restoration orb's special is now a gold bolt at your target, like the other Blasts. It hits for 60% of an Arcane Blast, and the damage it deals heals whoever is most hurt, you or a party member within 15 m, for that much again, plus the orb's 20% healing bonus. Healing past their full becomes an Overflow shield. A miss heals nothing, and nor does a cast when nobody is hurt. For healing the whole party, use Bloom. The Hobgoblin Healer casts it too, so it now heals its most hurt hobgoblin by hitting you.

Why: a healer now heals by fighting, with the same button as every other caster, instead of standing in a circle.

The Bound Blade trains Strength too. Its hits split their XP evenly between Magic and Strength, the way a glaive splits between Strength and Dexterity. It still scales on Magic. Player suggestion

Specials reset your auto-attack. After a weapon special, your next auto-attack waits one full swing (from the cast, or the special's last hit). NPC casters follow the same rule.

Why: specials now trade against auto-attacks instead of stacking on top of them.

Regen is four times as fast out of combat. Health regen from food and mana regen from robes and food run four times as fast while you're out of combat. Resting doesn't stack on top: you get whichever is faster.

• Kindled doubles it again. Burn any log and your health and mana regen run twice as fast for as long as you're Kindled: eight times as fast out of combat, twice as fast in a fight.
• Food and log tooltips and the Kindled buff say so.

Why: so food and gear regen pay off between fights.

Damage shows as a range. Weapon tooltips, your combat stats and the Codex now show the range most hits land in, e.g. "35–65", instead of one average. Weapon tooltips add a Crit hit range, and the Codex shows an NPC's crit hits with their percentage. The hits themselves are unchanged. Spell cards on your action bar now show the damage too: your specials, Charge and ults list the range of their hits with your gear and levels, plus what a crit adds. The Spellbook and trainers still show it as a % of weapon or spell damage. Player suggestion

Fighters stand a little further apart. You and humanoid NPCs are a little wider, matched to the models, so two melee fighters meet at about 2 m (was 1.85 m). Big NPCs grew the most: trolls, the Goblin Chief and the Baby Goblin Chief are nearly twice as wide, so you fight them from further off. Why: the old size left everyone standing too close.

Areas hit anything they touch. A cone, ring or circle now hits you if any part of your body is inside it, not just your centre. That goes for NPC specials and for yours: Cleave, Crippling Sweep, a glaive's splash, the ults, and Bloom and Healing Blast's heals. A lamp's safe light still counts where you stand.

Debuffs on your effect row. Venom, Lights Out and the slows, roots and burns on you now show on your effect row, filling in from the right, with time left: Scorch, Burning, Chilled, Frozen, Blood Mark, Pinned and Crippled. Hover one to read what it does. Frozen covers you in ice shards, and Chilled and Crippled give you a pale frost haze, on NPCs too. Player suggestion

New hit sounds. Daggers, two-handed weapons, glaives and spears now hit with their own recorded sounds, eight of each, and the same hit never plays twice in a row. One-handed swords and axes use the two-handed set. NPCs wielding them sound the same. Arcane Blast has its own hit sound too.

• Every melee hit lands with the same punch. Blade hits are much louder than before, and maces and fists a little quieter, to match.
• Your own fight is loudest. Hits, blocks, grunts, spell and arrow impacts and deaths from fights that aren't yours play at about half the volume. A fight counts as yours when you or your target is in it, so your party's hits on your target stay loud. Boss warnings always play in full.

Why: blade hits were far quieter than everything else, and a crowd's fights shouldn't bury the one you're in.

Swing trails on weapons that had none: the Steel Battle Axe, Goblin Daggers, Troll Club and Reaver Hand Axe, so Reaver Berserkers, Axemen, goblin scouts and trolls show theirs.

Telegraphs read in any light. Marked ground for NPC special attacks now draws over haze and mist, with a bright edge and a dark outline.

New swings. A glaive's Crippling Sweep is now a flat sweep at knee to waist height across its arc, instead of an overhead twirl. A greatsword or greataxe's Cleave cuts right to left across its cone instead of chopping into the ground.

Weak NPCs leave you alone. An aggressive NPC stops attacking on sight once you're well above its level: from 5 levels above a very low NPC, growing with its level up to 15, and its aggro range shrinks as you close that gap. A level 2 goblin lets you pass from level 7. NPCs of level 15 and up are unchanged. Player suggestion

🌍World#

A repainted world. The meadow around Alderwic was one flat, repeating olive tile. Now it's painted ground with drifts of lush, flowering and worn grass, and real grass grows two to three times as far out.

• The edge of the world. Land that isn't open yet now sits behind a low red wall instead of mist, so you can see it. You still can't walk onto it.
• The ground has colour. The meadow no longer reads as one repeating tile: wide patches shift between lush green and sun-dried straw, with finer break-up inside them, and the grass takes the colour of the ground under it. Every ground type gets a little light and shade.
• Painted ground. The meadow, paths and Alderwic's street are repainted: hand-painted grass, warmer dirt paths and a street of laid setts. Flower drifts and lush patches dot the meadow, grass wears thin at path edges, slopes turn to pebbly earth and then grey mountain rock, and steep faces no longer smear their texture. Meadow rocks and cliffs are grey with moss on top.
• Grass reaches much further. Real grass now grows out to 65 m on Low (was 30), 95 m on Medium (was 52) and 120 m on High (was 64), thinning with distance so it fades out without popping. Wildflowers grow in the flower drifts. Potato keeps 30 m and no flowers.
• Birches are greener and bigger. Their leaves are a soft fresh green instead of lime, the few turned ones go a fuller butter yellow, and every birch is a quarter taller and wider, level with the pines. 22 new birches to chop in the fields and deer meadows south of Alderwic.
• More shrimp spots. The river south of Marlow's Hut, by Kippy, has 10 shrimp spots (was 5). Player suggestion
• Dropped items lie down. Spears, blades and other long drops lie flat on the ground instead of standing on their tips. Player suggestion

Why: the meadow ground was one flat colour that felt like it was missing detail. Open ground is now a palette, the way a real meadow is: lush and flowering grass, worn grass by the paths, earth on the slopes and rock above it.

🎒Inventory#

A coin pouch. Your silver now lives in a coin pouch under your bag instead of in a bag slot.

• It takes no slot, so the slot your coins used is free for something else.
• Loot, quest rewards, sales and Grand Exchange collects go straight in, even when your bag is full.
• Shops, repairs, trainers, the courier, Marlow and every other fee pay from it.
• The line under your bag shows your silver: the full number up to 10 million, then "12.3M". Hover it for the exact amount. A "+250" flashes up when silver comes in.
• It's always kept when you die. It never drops to your body or goes to Marlow.
• Banks don't hold silver any more. Silver already in your bag or bank moves into your pouch the first time you log in.
• To trade silver, click Offer silver under your bag in the trade window and say how much. It shows in your offer as coins.
• Silver can't be dropped on the ground.
• Each character has their own pouch.
• Silver is recorded. The game keeps a record of the silver each character earns and spends, and where it came from or went, to catch bugs and cheating. The Privacy policy says so (Version 7), and you'll be asked to agree to it again.

Why: silver was already kept when you died, so a slot for it was a slot you couldn't use, and banked silver only meant a shop could say "not enough" while you had plenty.