Changelog | Veles: Rise of the Damned

The one-ultimate-per-hero model is gone. Every hero now has three Disciplines — equippable active abilities with their own upgrade trees — paced by six new discipline gems. Around them, the game world has been rebuilt: isometric levels, reworked lighting with a Light Radius stat, high-detail doodads, and per-enemy death shaders. The first Legendary items sit above Epic, and the enemy runtime was rearchitected for performance.

Fifteen hero Disciplines

Three per hero across all five, each a root active ability plus a six-node upgrade tree. A hero equips up to three, and equipping is free to change between runs.

Ultimates replaced

Disciplines take over the hero ability slot. The old ultimate bar, its charge timer, and the per-hero ultimates are retired.

Build trees, not switches

Every Discipline has six passive nodes at five levels each, purchased one point at a time. Allocated levels stay locked until a respec refunds the tree and its gems.

Paragon-gated slots

One equipped Discipline slot at Paragon 0–9, a second at 10–19, and a third from Paragon 20.

Six discipline gems

Ruby, Sapphire, Topaz, Emerald, Amethyst, and Diamond drop from kills at roughly 1 in 750, improving toward 1 in 250 with Magic Find. Cut three of any colour into one of another.

The world, rebuilt

Levels are isometric now, lighting runs off a new Light Radius stat, flat darkness is replaced by high-detail doodads and torches, and enemies dissolve through dedicated death shaders.

Woodsworn Bear Trap discipline screen: the node tree with 20 of 20 points spent, and a detail panel listing physical and fire damage, area, cooldown, armed duration, stun, and trap count — **A tree per Discipline.**Bear Trap fully specced — Ember Snap adds the fire damage, Scattered Snares the extra traps, and the panel shows the resulting numbers.

Spellblade Blink discipline screen: a partially spent node tree and a detail panel with magical and lightning damage, area, cooldown, teleport distance, and a lightning resistance debuff — **Read the build as you make it.**Every node level updates the cast stats on the right before you commit the point.

**Gems pace the build.**Points decide what a Discipline becomes; gems decide how fast you can buy into it.

Hero Disciplines

Fifteen Disciplines, three per hero. Woodsworn get Bear Trap, Track, and Shadowstep; Spellblade get Blink, Spell Echo, and Elemental Exposure; Nightreaver get Death Mark, Vanish, and Shadow Dash; Bonebreaker get Ground Slam, Blood Rage, and Charge; Lightbearer get Divine Shield, Consecration, and Holy Charge.
Roles, not just damage. Disciplines cover deployables, mobility dashes, invulnerability, ground zones, stealth buffs, and resistance-shredding marks — several deal no direct damage at all and exist to reshape a fight.
Node effects in three buckets. Each upgrade targets the Discipline itself (damage, radius, duration, cooldown, extra instances), the hero for the ability's window (a temporary stat buff across all abilities), or enemies for a duration (resistance break, slow trail, stun, bonus gold).
Respec support. Resetting one Discipline clears its allocated node levels, refunds the gems spent on it, and frees its point budget without removing the base ability.
Equipping is loadout, not commitment. Which Disciplines are equipped can change every run; only the points spent inside a tree are locked.

Discipline gems and economy

Six gem colours. Ruby, Sapphire, Topaz, Emerald, Amethyst, and Diamond, each hinting at the kind of node it feeds — direct damage, control timing, cast rhythm, duration and counts, utility and defense, or keystones.
Drops and Magic Find. Gems fall from enemy kills at roughly 1 in 750, scaling toward about 1 in 250 with Magic Find, and all six drop uniformly.
Cutting recipe. Three gems of any colour convert into one gem of any other colour, so a build never hard-stalls on a missing colour.
Gems added to the inventory and drop tables. They live alongside components and Tomes as a first-class collectible.

Gameplay visual overhaul

Isometric world. The game world was moved to an isometric projection, with a more powerful tile-based level generator that pulls from per-level data.
Levels 1–5 rebuilt. New tiles and art across every level, torches as light sources, and all doodads replaced with high-detail versions.
Light Radius stat. Lighting now runs off a real Light Radius stat on heroes, and gear can roll Increased Light Radius.
Darkness replaced with doodads. Flat darkness is gone; nearby doodads fade to transparent so they never hide the hero.
Paragon-aware hero textures. Heroes have new textures that scale in detail with Paragon level and equipment quality.
Death shaders. Regular enemies dissolve on an ash-wind shader; bosses and mini-bosses burn away on a longer dissolve shader.
Shared UI panel. In-game panels were unified into a single shared panel that scales cleanly across every resolution, and ability slots now fill in the order abilities are learned.

An isometric run in the Forsaken Woods with high-detail doodads, the eight-slot ability bar, equipped Disciplines, and floating damage numbers — **The same hunt, rebuilt.**Isometric levels, reworked lighting, high-detail doodads, and the eight-slot ability bar with Disciplines in the HUD.

Items, performance, and fixes

The first Legendary items. A new rarity tier above Epic enters the loot pool and the boss drop tables as the new ceiling of the chase.
Enemy runtime rearchitected. Enemy entities were split into separate data and view logic with a one-way state boundary; the base enemy view dropped from 16 nodes to 10, and health and cast bars are now zero-node.
Offscreen and movement optimizations. Units offscreen skip animation and view work, and per-frame movement lookups are cached instead of refetched.
Ability diff and stat previews. The game shows a before/after diff when an ability or Discipline node changes, and the Disciplines screen is fully localized.

Update onAndroid Update onSteam Update oniOS

Clearing the campaign is no longer the end of the hunt. Seventeen Trials of Veles turn the Crimson Rift on Damned into an escalating ladder, three new equipment slots and the first Epic items deepen the build underneath it, elemental damage becomes a real part of combat, and the entire Veil of Damned modifier pool has been resharpened and fully localized.

Seventeen Trials of Veles

Complete all 15 campaign levels to unlock Trial I. Every trial after that is gated behind the one before it, so the ladder only moves when you do.

From +5 to +1000 enemy power

Each trial adds a flat bonus to the base enemy HP and damage multiplier on the Crimson Rift at Damned, and pays +25% score at Trial I up to +425% at Trial XVII.

Three new equipment slots

Gloves, belts, and boots add 54 items and take the loadout from five slots to eight.

The first Epic items

A new rarity tier above Rare adds 24 Epics, three in every slot, as the new ceiling of the loot chase.

Elemental damage

Fire, cold, lightning, and poison are now first-class damage types with matching resistances, and pure damage has left combat calculation entirely.

51 modifiers, five levels each

Veil modifiers are unlocked, crafted, and equipped like loot now, and rarities have replaced the old modifier tiers.

Level selection map with difficulty tiers, the Veil of the Damned entry, and the active trial badges — **Pick the contract before the run.**Difficulty, the Veil of the Damned, and your equipped modifiers all sit on the level map.

Veil of the Damned screen showing the full modifier grid, active modifiers, and total score bonus — **Fifty-one modifiers, one screen.**Owned levels, locked entries, and the running score bonus for the stack you are about to fight.

Modifier detail panel showing rarity, level five of five, effect text, and score bonus — **Every modifier is a dial now.**Rarity, level, effect, and score bonus, with the option to equip it deliberately.

Inventory showing all eight equipment slots and the Epic rarity filter — **Eight slots, five rarities.**Boots, gloves, and belts join the loadout, and Epic sits above Rare in every filter.

Items and damage

Gloves, belts, and boots. Three new equipment slots join weapons, armor, helmets, rings, and amulets, adding 18 base items each for 54 new pieces to hunt.
The first Epic items. A new rarity tier above Rare brings 24 Epics, three in every slot, as the new ceiling of the loot chase.
Elemental damage types. Fire, cold, lightning, and poison are now authored damage types alongside physical and magical, each with its own resistance on heroes and enemies.
Pure damage removed. Pure is gone from combat calculation. Forced damage such as overtime doom, out-of-bounds damage, and hard-death effects now bypasses enemy hit resolution directly instead of routing through a damage type.

The Veil of Damned, rebuilt

Five levels per modifier. All 51 modifiers now have five levels instead of a single fixed effect. A stronger level means a harsher run and a bigger score bonus, so every modifier is a dial rather than a switch.
Rarities replace tiers. Modifier tiers are gone. Modifiers now use the same rarity language as loot, split across 13 Common, 11 Uncommon, 12 Rare, 11 Epic, and 4 Legendary, with rarity driving how often a modifier rolls.
Unlock by surviving them. Win a run on Broken or Damned with a locked modifier active and you keep it at level 1, turning random pressure into something you own.
Craft the upgrades. Levels 2 through 5 are crafted from components, Hunter's Trophies, and Tomes, giving your materials a second home outside the forge.
Equip up to three. Owned modifiers can be slotted deliberately instead of waiting for a favourable roll, so you choose the contract you fight under.
New art and full localization. Every modifier has new icon art, rewritten effect text, and translations across English, Russian, and Simplified Chinese.

Balance and fixes

Difficulty resistance penalties. Broken now strips 30 points and Damned 100 points of flat resistance from every hero damage type, so the hero stat panel reports what you actually resist.
Paragon and gear pass. Paragon stats were updated for all five heroes, alongside item and ability balance work and a reworked run result screen.
Bash fix. Enemy units with Bash can no longer chain the effect into a permanent stun.
Interface pass. Panels across the menus were replaced with native boxes for cleaner scaling.

Update onAndroid Update onSteam Update oniOS

A new long-term collection hunt now lives in the Hunter's Diary. Find forbidden Tomes on Damned difficulty, bind their power into Compendiums, and assemble the Black Encyclopedia of the Damned.

70 collectible Tomes

Fourteen enemy families each hold five volumes, with a same-family 3:1 exchange for duplicate protection.

14 Compendiums

Complete each five-volume set for a unique passive and a score bonus when that family begins the run.

The Black Encyclopedia

Complete the full collection for every Codex passive, +25% score, and +3 levels to learned abilities.

A sharper hunt

Graphics controls, scaled rendering, auto ability selection, quest clarity, balance work, and fixes.

Ghost mastery screen showing Tome volumes, a crafted Compendium, and the sacrifice action — **Collect. Craft. Sacrifice.**Every enemy family has a five-volume story to complete.

Black Encyclopedia crafting screen showing the fourteen required Compendiums — **Forbidden knowledge, made whole.**All fourteen Compendiums lead to the final Encyclopedia.

Update onAndroid Update onSteam Update oniOS

The largest visual update to Veles redesigned nearly every major screen, added 25 uncommon and rare items, introduced skill-level bonuses on equipment, and reworked run scoring.

A complete interface redesign

A unified Veles theme reached the Main Menu, Tavern, Inventory, Shop, Hunter's Diary, Quests, Leaderboards, level selection, and combat overlay.

25 new items

New uncommon and rare weapons, armor, helmets, rings, and amulets expanded the equipment hunt.

Skill-level gear bonuses

Equipment could now raise All, Active, Passive, Magical, Physical, or Pure Skills.

Scoring and mobile polish

Revised score weights arrived with scaling, safe-area, navigation, sign-in, rotation, and interface fixes.

Version 2.0.0 level selection map showing five cursed destinations — **The world at a glance**The redesigned map brought difficulty, victories, best times, scores, and every destination together.

Version 1.0.0 established the complete Veles foundation: heroes, cursed runs, bosses, loot, persistent progression, connected accounts, and the first production-ready builds.

The core hunt

Choose a hero, survive escalating waves, build abilities during the run, defeat the boss, and bring rewards home.

Permanent progression

Equipment, crafting, the Reliquary, hero growth, achievements, and the Rite of Ascension made every descent matter.

Connected foundations

Cloud saves, Steam identity, leaderboards, account flows, and the Apple platform foundation supported play across devices.

The 1.x era

Rapid bug fixing, combat feedback, mobile controls, new enemies, passive abilities, quests, minigames, performance work, and balance improvements followed.

The history of the hunt

The Disciplines arrive

Hero Disciplines

Discipline gems and economy

Gameplay visual overhaul

Items, performance, and fixes

The Trials of Veles begin

Items and damage

The Veil of Damned, rebuilt

Balance and fixes

The Codex is out

The hunt, reforged

The first descent