Hi everyone!

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NOTE BEFORE LAUNCHING THE GAME : PLEASE VERIFY THE INTEGRITY OF GAME CACHE. See here how to do so :
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=2037-QEUH-3335&l=english

Also, please note that Bounties (randomly generated dungeon) are available once the “Explore the World” mission is triggered.
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Last Wednesday marked the one-year anniversary of the Umbra Kickstarter.
Back in May 2015 Umbra impressed gamers worldwide with its cutting-edge graphics and ambitious goals. By June 14 the project was funded, thanks to the community who pledge almost twice the funding goal! Back then the team was composed of only three people, so SolarFall needed to hire developers in order to give life to their vision.
A year later, the game is in full production in the new office, and the team is now composed of 10 developers working full-time.

We want to thank you all for your support, we wouldn’t be here without you.

Today’s update packs many bug fixes as well as new features like a new camera system, dismemberment and two-handed axe combos. It also feature nice performance improvements !
We updated the engine to 3.8.6, which is a big step towards a CryEngine V implementation and the Linux version.
We are now focusing on stabilizing the current build before accelerating the implementation of other features. More info about this our devblogs soon !

Passive Skills have been added in order to allow players to define their play-style and how resources are spent and generated.
With the current set of passive skills, players should be able to go full mage, with constant Umbra regeneration. Unlimited Power is the first spell that we now consider to be a basic magic attack. Its damage has been reduced, but its cost removed. This will prevent the skill from triggering rage conservation and will let rage fill into umbra will casting the spell.
Player who wish to play as full-on Warriors can do so by putting points into passives that reduce rage loss, increase rage conservation time and transfer umbra into rage when hit.

There is still the problem of Rage consumption. The game currently lacks melee spells that consume Rage, but charged attacks and spells like Whirlwind are 90% ready. We just have a few bugs to iron out before we can publish them.

GENERAL:
The engine version is now Cryengine 3.8.6

New camera system – various options to control camera’s speed and targetting are now available in the “Game Settings” menu
Dismemberment (only a few enemies for now : skeletons, butchers and most zombies)
Mouse navigation has been entirely reworked
Various fixes for quest system
Performance improvements!

RENDERING:
New Blood decals and blood particles
New attack trails for combos
Improved player visibility in dark areas
Improved various particle effects for both player and enemies
ENVIRONMENT:
Many fixes and optimizations
Greatly improve performances in Amarth
Fixed: unshaded trees after state of transparency
Fixed: Water reflections artefacts when ‘low effects’ mode turned on. This result to reactivate some posteffects, fixing other problems, but having less good performance.
Improved: fog of the weather when it rains
Fixed: Demon sword size
New photogrammetry trees in the open world
Fixed: Some environment probes were too dark at night
Fixed: red ball (mising assets) in randomly generated dungeons
Fixed: wrong physic parameters for several entities (objects flying when hit)
Fixed a crash occurring with AI in tight environments
Small performance improvements when spawning new AI and loots

UI:
Small tweaks and improvements
Camera options in Game Settings
New: Dev choice option for Camera shake
New: Enemy blink option in Game Settings
New: Enemy health bar option in Game Settings
New: Sharpening option
New: Chromatic aberration option
Removed: Distant dof, it will be reimplemented in the future

GAMEPLAY:
New combo animation for two handed axes !
Modified : The number of magical affixes has been lowered. It didn’t make sense to have weapons generating 6 affixes at the moment, since the game is still quite easy. This feature will be re implemented in the future.
Many balance changes to spell costs.
New passives skills for better customization.
Mana Bonus Globe (blue) are working fine now
Rage Globe (yellow) are working fine now

ANIMATION:
Many new animations for the player

We hope you enjoy it !
Cheers,
Wolcen Studio