We’re a little over one week on from the launch of Mortal Shell 2, a game that Jeremy liked quite a lot. But the work of a developer is never done these days, what with the advent of the internet and patches ‘n’ all. A balance patch arrived on launch day, but the Soulslike has now received its first full update, bringing a whole lot with it.
First up, there’s some new items, like fragile tarstones, a “new class of tarstone which breaks after losing durability,” as well as a glimpse stone, which “wears down as you defeat enemies, then breaks into glimpses.” You can also now acquire Egon’s stone, which revives you at the entrance of a dungeon “at the cost of its durability,” but when it breaks you won’t lose any gloom on that death.
Getting around the world of Mortal Shell 2 should be a tad easier, and more enriching, now too. More beacons have been added in Fainweald and Mammon, though these are only active in the day. Various items have been added to the world, “and some problematic chests have been reset,” too. You’ll also be able to come across a couple of cosmetic headpieces, one that looks like a hand-stitched frog, the other like a potato sack with an eyehole in it, once you’ve beaten “certain questlines.”
Ripostes have received some improvements as well. Damage you do against enemies with ripostes now scales with enemy health, meaning new game plus and night mode won’t feel so punishing. Alongside this, “many player riposte recoveries end sooner, so control returns to you faster,” riposte damage is “now calculated and applied by the riposte itself, which resolves cases where it applied twice or not at all,” and “invulnerability windows are now consistent between ripostes, and last through to the end of the animation rather than expiring partway.”
Enemy tracking and magnetism maximums have also been tweaked and should be a bit more forgiving, with the devs explaining that they’ll be adjusted on an individual basis in patches to come. A number of cutscenes where characters would just turn away or stare at something awkwardly have been fixed. And a number of areas where there were lots of enemies have seen their headcounts reduced to improve performance. There’s a ton of other fixes, tweaks, additions and changes that have been made too, which you can read about in the full patch notes.