Hello, everyone!

The next big update is nearly here. To skip the formalities: you can now check out the upcoming 1.1 update through the experimental branch ON STEAM.  After you've claimed a key for it here, you can access this by rightclick on the game in your steam library, going to options, access the beta's tab and select 'experimental' from the dropdown. Linux users will have to wait for the end of the beta to get access to this update on Steam.

Please note that the 1.1 is in active beta testing and will contain new and interesting ways to break. It is opt-in only! Please report these to me through the usual channels, see the sticky note in the Steam community.

What's new?
Quite frankly, I've basically complete rewritten the way graphics are rendered. For you, it means nothing more than most likely increased performance. On older laptops and/or pc's, this is especially visible as the performance there counts a lot more. Using better profiler tools to analyze various bottlenecks of the game, I've been able to rework problem areas deep within the core. So, across the board, performance should be better. If you didn't have any performance issues before, you will not see anything changing.

Endless Mode
A highly requested mode I hear a lot. I've tried to stay true to the definition of the term and the game is, indeed, quite endless. You are able to begin at floor 1 (as opposed to B35) and you can go as far as you want. Statistics break the limits and can go far and beyond regular designed values. Monsters, items, damage and heals will all scale beyond the normal limits. Endless Mode does not currently have an online highscore list! I'll get on that later. For this reason, the champions you encounter are NPC's for the time being. Your best run will, of course, still be recorded in your own local leaderboard. :) In the future, you will be able to resume Endless Mode from a checkpoint you've unlocked (which is every x amount of floors).

Several small, but notable, changes
Patchnotes aside, there's some small notable changes worth a mention.
- Savepoints and how to save the game have become more apparent and obvious.
- Blacksmith will no longer repair either to pristine or to usable. It makes zero sense. Blacksmith will now either repair one item fully, or all your active equipment fully. That makes more sense.
- You can now toggle off animations fully. Game becomes super fast.
- You can also toggle off the entire tutorial area. Go straight into the game.

Leaderboards clear
With every major update, leaderboards will fully clear. Global leaderboards remain but version leaderboards will clean and you may now become the ultimate champion of version 1.1, soon! With the beta, this is also already cleared but will not carry over to the live 1.1 version. Just so you know.

Full patchnotes after beta
I'll be collecting reports for this beta and fix any last minute things that pop up. For this reason, the full patchnotes will be posted after the beta ends.

Enjoy the beta and let me know what you think!

-Lance