Ashfire Keep 1.1.0 — Aim, Build, Hold

New

Optional manual aiming. In Options → Aiming you can swap the usual auto-attack for directional aiming: aim with the cursor and hold left click, or use the right stick and right trigger on a controller. Stop holding and you stop shooting. Auto-aim remains the default and the balance reference — manual is an addition, not a replacement.

Per-class weapon tiers. Each class upgrades its weapon through four tiers with Renown — Starter, Bronze, Steel and Gold — up to +40% damage. The tier shows on the weapon you carry.

Inferno difficulty. A fourth step above Nightmare, with mutators that change how you play, not just the numbers.

Three new defenses: stone wall, brazier and frost totem.

Move placed defenses for a fraction of their cost.

Pick defenses at a distance. No need to stand next to them: cycle with the D-pad on a controller, or right-click them with the mouse. The selected one glows and shows what you can do to it — repair, move or sell.

Three new wave events.

Run recap. When a run ends, a panel lists the upgrades you took, in the order you took them, instead of making you open the full compendium from the main menu.

Accessible color mode, in Options.

18 achievements, all of them obtainable.

Progression balance

This is the change you will feel most, and it is deliberate. Renown came in so fast that a single victory unlocked the entire defense system without you even trying. Both ends were adjusted:

• All six defenses cost more: between 45% and 60% more than before. A first win now buys one or two, not all of them.
• You earn less Renown per run: a full victory on Normal drops from 190 to 135, and one-time objectives drop from 380 to 235 in total.
• More time between waves: from 8 to 14 seconds. Repairing is now limited to that window, so it had to be long enough to matter.

On Normal, unlocking all six defenses now takes around 8 victories. Higher difficulties pay considerably better: 5 on Hard, 4 on Nightmare, 3 on Inferno.

If you were already playing, the game will offer you a one-time fresh start when you open it. Nothing is deleted on its own: it is a recommendation, not a wipe. It mostly matters if you had already unlocked all six defenses, since otherwise you will never see the new pacing.

Interface

• Custom mouse cursor. The game drops the generic system pointer, and switches to a reticle while manual aiming is on.
• Pick your reticle color: gold, white, cyan, magenta or red. The gold one got lost against dirt paths and stone.
• The reticle now glows — a soft halo behind the shape, so you never lose track of it, least of all in Act II when night falls and torches are the only thing lighting the place.
• New map selection thumbnails. The old ones were taken before the maps had their current houses and scenery, so they showed a place that no longer exists.
• Menus adapt to the screen. At high interface scale the main menu switches to two columns instead of pushing buttons off-screen.
• The upgrade compendium is now two columns with tighter entries: the text that repeated itself is gone.
• Dropdowns and scrollbars drop the system grey and use the same wood and gold as the rest of the interface.
• Proper typography: Alegreya for text, Metamorphous for titles and buttons.
• All interface text is 20% larger.
• Controller buttons are drawn as icons instead of written out.
• In-run character stats: damage, attack speed, range and move speed.
• Compact upgrade cards: name, stack and a one-line effect, with the full text in a separate panel. Levelling up used to be a wall of text, and boss rewards said nothing at all.

Fixes

• The "Class training" act reward sometimes granted nothing at all. It now always grants an upgrade and names it before you choose.
• Defenses could be repaired endlessly during a wave, making them immortal. Repairing is now limited to the window between waves.
• Two event effects (experience bonus and fragile defenses) never applied.
• Enemies piled up chasing the player above the intended cap.
• Enemies hit the inn from far too far away — up to 70 pixels of thin air — and the same went for your defenses. They now have to be right next to them.
• Ranged enemies shot through walls, and could get stuck doing it forever. They now need line of sight, and reposition without it.
• The Mage twin projectile aimed at nothing and spawned on top of the main one.
• The Mage explosion dealt full damage across the whole radius; it now falls off with distance.
• On a controller, clicking the right stick sold a defense by accident — the same stick that moves the build cursor.
• Opening the upgrade menu opened the detail panel on its own.
• Several notices drew on top of each other when closing an act or levelling up.
• The player could get stuck against the inn. The inn shared a collision layer with your defenses; it now has its own.
• Selling a defense left its info card stranded on screen.
• The wave panel was clipped whenever an event was active: the enemy count line was cut off by the border.
• Maxing out the interface scale could lock you out, with the Options buttons pushed off-screen. The change now reverts on its own after 10 seconds if you do not confirm it.
• Some enemies went completely inert, neither moving nor attacking even with you standing next to them.
• Closing the game now saves your settings and progression. Anything you had already earned was saved anyway — at the end of each run, and whenever you completed a challenge or killed a boss — but closing the window did not save on its own. It does now.
• One story line was cut short by an unquoted comma.
• Readability fixes: boss health bar far from its sprite, duplicated level in the HUD, duplicated epic relic, clipped text and a build bar with the wrong width.