Lords of the Fallen Gets Colossal Roadmap for 2023

Nov. 8, 2023

Lords of the Fallen Roadmaphas been revealed, and it’s impressive! The game has been out for less than a month, but the developer team have already demonstrated refreshing commitment to their craft by not only releasing over10 incremental patchesthat focused on community feedback over the past few weeks, but they have now also announced a fantastic amount offree contentthat they have planned for the game.

The Free Content Plan for Lords of the Fallen divides the upcoming goodies into “weekly enhancement” and “development work”. It is clear from the announcement post, which you can find on Steam, that the Hexworks team is very passionate about the game and wants to continue to improve the experience for all players.

The development work focus on adding new stuff like theHalloween event, newweapons, new game modes. I’ll go into those after we see what you can expect in the “weekly” version.

Weekly enhancements promise to focus on

Halloween Event– Already launched, this special event allowed players to do a special in-game treasure hunt and quest to obtain aunique and limited Helm.

Mob Density Reduction– This is also already launched. Being overwhelmed by hordes ofmonsterswas a common complaint for many players, so the number of spawns and the “leashes” of monsters have been adjusted. This was done in Patch 1.1.224 by reducing the number of enemies present in areas where players most struggle. These enemies are removed in your initial playthrough, but remain in NG+, in keeping with the more challenging experience players are seeking.

Inventory & Stash Expansions– Plans to increase inventory are now formally announced. Whether this means theNPC shopswill have more goodies remains to be seen, but given its separating “inventory” and “stash” I certainly hope so! I would very much like to get to buy more things from vendors after a certain point in the game to facilitate experimentation withbuilds. There’s also the added desire to carry more of everything, but we’ll see how it pans out as developers make their plans clear.

New Spells– Divided into two packs, the roadmap promises to bring newspells. This would be an excellent addition as there are currently 59 spells betweenUmbral,RadiantandInfernoand it would be amazing to increase that and improve build variety. It would also impact the depth of your commitment to a specific line, and perhaps give more incentive to increase your Spell Slots. I assume that the new spells will likely be associated with new questlines for thematic consistency, but they may also be added as treasure or boss exchanges.

New Armor Sets & Questlines– Specialnew questlinesand rewards of anarmor setfor each Radiant, Rhogar and Umbral has been announced. This is something I’m actually quite excited for as I love collecting armor sets, and the previews of the armor look amazing. The fact they will be quest-related also means added exploration and complexity to my playthrough, so a big plus for existing and new players. These new quests may also include new mini-bosses, and perhaps impact the rest of the game in some form.

New Grievous Strikes– These are the “critical” moves of the game, so I assume this means there’ll be new movesets to be performed when executing them. Considering there are12 different weapon types, I hope they each get their own unique new flair.

Additional Secret Boss Weapon Abilities– Somespecific boss weaponsgain unique abilities after performing a certain amount of steps, and when used in a certain way. Discovering these is fun for explorers and can really change your gameplay, so adding more is certainly a plus, but there were very few boss weapons with this mechanic so the hype around it died quickly. It’s great to see the developers plan to expand on this aspect.

Split PvE & PvP Balancing– This is something that took FromSoftware over 10 years to figure out, so I’m very happy to hear that Hexworks is already working on it. There’s nothing worse as a player than having your PvE build nerfed because someone is abusing it on PvP encounters that you never do! It should also help optimize PvP encounters so there’s more fairness around fights and to create more creative approaches that skip the cookie cutter “OP” flavor of the week.

Gamepad Rebinding– This is a commonly asked feature and I’m very pleased to learn it’s in development, as being able torework bindingscan really improve your overall experience with any game.

New Game + Modifiers– This specific update had been announced as in the works earlier on, when developers tweaked the wayVestigeswork inNew Game Pluswith Patch v.1.1.224. The NG+ modifiers will allow players to fully customize their NG+ experience, whether that’s retaining all vestiges, keeping just a few, or removing them completely. It will also include other fun modifiers like a “hardcore” mode (1 death = permadeath), item randomizers, enemy randomizers, etc. The feature set is yet to be fully defined, but the developer announced intention is to release the modifier system before the end of the year.

Right now, the Hexworks team is working on optimizing the game and improving its stability, performance, and player experience. With new free content announced, it’s inevitable to wonder whether the game will also get paidDLC and Expansions.

Given Lords of the Fallensold over 1 Million copies in 10 days, I think it’s enough of a commercial success to warrant paid content in the future. With the ongoing performance improvements and the inevitable winter sales that will add new users in December and January, the player base will increase and be significant enough that it could support paid content.

I personally would very much like to see some tweaks done to the game’s existingNPCsand questlines to facilitate progression and understanding ofwhat gets locked out as you do what. I would also like to see a revision to the game’sendings, as they could feel quite underwhelming and even rushed after doing significant work to unlock them.

But besides those wishes for free tweaks, I think I would happily pay for more extensive content that allows me to explore new mid-game areas and unlock new spell types, new weapons and armor, or hopefully a contained small story that picks up after the game events.

So what would you like to see? Are there any specific tweaks and changes you are wanting or looking forward to? Will you be buying any paid DLC if it’s ever made? Let us know in the comments below.

Fexelea

MMO raider by day and guide writer by night, Fex enjoys multiplatform gaming, good books and animes, and streaming with a cold beer.

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