Patch Notes — Boss Tuning, World Polish, and Control Upgrades

This update is focused on making Where Giants Fall feel cleaner, stronger, and more reliable in the middle of combat.

The biggest improvements in v0.31 are in movement feel, boss encounter tuning, procedural world generation, control and audio options, and combat stability.

Highlights

• Player movement and dodge actions now read more cleanly, especially during diagonal travel and strafing.
• Morvessa, Mother of Dread has received a major combat tuning pass, with clearer hazards, faster pressure, and a more imposing battlefield presence.
• Procedural biomes now use richer clustering and cleaner scatter rules, making worlds feel more intentional and less random.
• Controls and options continue to improve, with new rebinding support and a dedicated toggle for XP orb pickup sounds.
• Several combat effects and projectile systems were improved to keep heavy fights smoother and easier to read.

This update puts a lot of attention on cleaner combat reads, stronger bosses, and richer procedural environments.

Movement & Player Feel

Player movement has received another polish pass to keep traversal and evasive actions looking more natural in live combat.

• Forward and backward diagonal movement now keeps cleaner leg motion.
• The player body leans more naturally into diagonal travel.
• Rolls and dashes now feel smoother and more intentional.
• Rolls started while strafing now turn into the actual dash direction instead of reading like a sideways tumble.

These are subtle changes, but they matter. When movement looks and feels right, everything around combat starts to feel more controlled.

Abilities & Combat Readability

A number of abilities and reward presentations were updated to improve clarity, impact, and consistency in combat.

• Ancient Spirits now uses its original spirit-orb visuals again for both regular and ultimate attacks.
• Active ability reward cards now describe current upgrade milestones more accurately when you acquire or upgrade an ability.
• Flash of Light now ends with a much larger finishing flash, making the heal release easier to read in chaotic fights.
• Rejuvenation now has a fuller, cleaner aura presentation, while visual artifact issues seen in some Windows builds have been resolved.
• Dragon Breath level 5 now uses a more reliable aura setup, improving consistency during intense fights.

Boss Encounters

This week includes a major tuning pass for Morvessa, Mother of Dread, along with a sharper pass on Phalanx.

Morvessa, Mother of Dread

Morvessa should now feel clearer, faster, and more threatening.

• Her poison orb volley now uses clearer orange projectiles, fires faster, travels slightly higher above the arena floor, hits harder, and applies slight knockback.
• Her poison beams now sit higher in the air, sweep faster, and continue escalating on repeated casts alongside poison orbs and Call of the Gnomes.
• Poison pool eruption now creates fewer but larger pools, making the hazard easier to read while keeping the threat high.
• Mark of Death cleanse areas now last 25 seconds.
• Morvessa now waits only 1 second between completed casts.
• She also appears 20% larger in combat, making the encounter feel more imposing.

Phalanx

Phalanx has also been pushed toward a more dangerous pace.

• Moves faster
• Casts more often
• Cataclysm now deals double its previous damage

Stages & Procedural World Generation

Procedural biomes have received a meaningful quality pass this week.

Generated worlds now use stronger clustering, denser biome-specific prop mixes, and cleaner understory rules. The goal is simple: make runs feel more intentional and less randomly scattered.

Several biome passes were improved directly:

• Asian Mountains now keeps Silvergrass extremely rare.
• Winter and Snowy Forest now use curated flower-and-moss carpet sets.
• Desert returns to a fuller scatter pass.
• Swamp regains a heavier tree silhouette with more restrained clutter.

A few world-interaction elements were also improved:

• Giant Remnant trial portals now use the Holy lootbeam again, sit higher above sloped ground, and prefer flatter terrain so they are less likely to spawn below the surface.
• Trees and bushes now use smoother continuous wind motion instead of visibly stepping through gust updates.

UI, Controls, Audio & VFX

This patch also improves the player’s control over the game feel itself.

• Added a new settings toggle to mute XP orb pickup sounds without lowering other sound effects.
• Camera zoom in and camera zoom out can now be rebound from the Controls menu.
• Movement directions now support per-direction rebinding, including alternate keyboard bindings.
• Beacon miniboss upgrade reward banners now stay visible after choosing a reward without replaying the general notification sound.
• Roll and dash now use a quieter wind whoosh along with a subtler grounded visual effect.
• Razor Shuriken firing sound is now 20% quieter.

Performance & Stability

Several under-the-hood changes in this patch are aimed at making intense fights smoother and easier to read.

• Reduced the chance of hitching during Morvessa’s poison orb volley, especially when the full attack sequence begins.
• Rapid-fire projectile and trail lights were rebalanced to improve readability and reduce visual spikes during intense fights.
• Several aura and ability effects were cleaned up for better stability, especially around Rejuvenation and Dragon Breath.

Developer Note

A lot of this patch is focused on polish that improves the game from moment to moment — the kind of work players feel constantly, even when it stays behind the scenes.

The goal here was to tighten the parts players feel constantly: movement, combat readability, boss pressure, world quality, and consistency in the middle of chaotic runs.

Looking Ahead

This update keeps pushing Where Giants Fall toward a cleaner, more readable, and more deliberate action roguelite — with stronger encounters, better world generation, and fewer rough edges getting in the way of the run.

More updates soon.