Example Alpha patch notes

To help share the love with our forum members who are not yet in the Alpha, here are the real (but slightly censored) patch notes for tomorrow's Alpha update:

Version 0.8.5
Features:
- Added vendors that can sell you items (accepting Currency Items in return). Initially they will only sell you equipment (gems are being considered for the next update). The vendor inventories refresh each time you gain a level.
- Added new skill prototype: unannounced
- Reduced the automatic re-sync distance to 3 tiles to test more aggressive settings
- Created a new world area in Act Two to house the church (next to the Crossroads)
- Large update to the Cathedral of Bone
- Environmental changes to the Flooded Depths
- Incrementally improved effects, animations, sounds and world areas (many new variation topologies)
- Improved appearance of Ghost Pirates
- Added a transparency slider for the minimap and adjusted the default transparency
- Added cleaner display of times on skills that add buffs
- Renamed Epic Chests and added them to the Merveil and Brutus levels
- Introduced some new tech for gathering shaders from alpha testers that we missed. This means that after each major alpha patch, we can quickly fix any of the tiny graphical lag spikes that occur in some areas.
- Corpse targeting now defaults to requiring a key to be held down
- You can now click through the life/mana orbs to do actions in the corner of the screen
- Added /itemlevel command, which tells you the generation level of the item on your cursor. This is useful for seeing what level monster or chest dropped it.
- Several additional UI options are now on by default (Always highlight, Show full descriptions and Show life/mana/shields)
- Chat messages now stay on screen longer before fading out

Bug Fixes:
- Finally fixed the mana/life regen display bug
- No-pickup UI behaviour should now work correctly
- Restored animations on waterfalls
- Fixed a client crash if an arrow was in the air when you left the area
- Fixed a bug with minimap transparency
- Appropriate sockets now highlight properly if a gem is on the cursor
- Opening the passive skill screen will no longer close the minimap. It just hides it while the screen is open.
- Fixed bugs related to right clicking a character name in chat that had a chat mode symbol prefixed to it
- Fixed a bug that would cause identical stats to overwrite each other on the display of items
- Many small improvements to forum item linking
- Adjusted some walkability maps on the Ledge to avoid bad placement of corpses and chests
- Logging out of a new character within one second will no longer permanently break it
- Fixed a bug where a gem could outlevel the player
- Fixed some terrain generation bugs
- Fixed Stun and Pierce support gems saying that they were skill gems
- Fixed bugs related to quest text not word wrapping
- Fixed crash that occured if you hit enter while loading a character
- Flickerstrike now runs into range of a targetted monster before teleporting to it (rather than failing and performing a melee attack)
- Fixed some lightning damage values displaying as 0-X

Balance:
- Raised attribute requirements on all skill and support gems. Many gems will no longer be usable until you gain more attributes
- Changed monster distribution of outdoors areas substantially so that they the packs are distributed more randomly. This means that some groups of monsters you encounter may be larger than before, and there are more suspenseful empty areas.
- Raised the monster levels of the Church Dungeon due to the additional area before it
- Made the first six levels of the game harder
- Changed the mana cost progression of the Multiple Projectiles support gem to reflect the fact that it dramatically increases your damage output at low levels of the gem
- Improved evasion rating by 25% around the board. This brings it in line with previous changes to energy shield and damage reduction)
- Disable corpse-usability on Water Elementals
- Increased Orb of Scouring stack size to 15
- Increased Jeweler's Orb stack size to 10
- Increased relative drop rate of Armour Shards, Orbs of Scouring, Jeweler's Orbs
- Reduced relative drop rate of Whetstones
- Increased difficulty of Kraityn
- Increased the item rarities in large (previously called "epic") chests
- Required level of a mod is now 80% of the generation level
- Change to unannounced skill
- Improved the mana regen per power charge passive
- Increased range of the Enduring Cry taunt
- Increased Detonate Dead damage
- Decreased Frenzy mana cost
- Improved Endurance Charges from 4% to 5% damage reduction
- Improved Frenzy Charges from 4% to 5% attack speed
- Improved Power Charges from 4% to 5% spell damage
- Unannounced skill nerf
- Reduced Ice Nova damage by 4%
- Increased Cold Snap damage by 4%. Now has 40% additional chill duration
- Nerfed Double Strike damage somewhat
- Increased Flicker strike attack speed bonus

"

Covert wrote:

Flicker strike sounds new.

I have a question, are you guys constantly updating effects, animations, sounds of all areas or are there some areas you are satisfied with?

Can we see another example of forum item linking please? Or it enabled in alpha forums only?

Flicker strike was shown in the Duelist announcement trailer, I believe. Maybe we haven't mentioned it by name though?

All of the art in the game is constantly being improved. The Alpha testers can attest to how often areas suddenly appear a lot better after the art department has had a second pass over them.

Only the Alpha realm has the up-to-date forum item linking, but if you want to see what it looked like several months ago: