Obsidian Entertainment is having something of a banner year, with the Xbox first-party developer launching fantasy-RPG Avowed in February, while Grounded 2 and The Outer Worlds 2 are slated to arrive in later in July and October, respectively.
The latest update for Avowed is now live, bringing a massive list of bug fixes to the come. Additionally, there are new weapons and skills for players to use, with enemy AI behavior also being tweaked so that many foes can also use skills that were previously exclusive to players.
The result should radically shake up the flow of combat. In order to allow players to use these new skills, all player points have been reset, meaning you'll want to hop into the menu and re-spend your skills in order to avoid having your Envoy being flattened by the next boss you fight.
Avowed also finally has the delayed localization support for Japanese and Korean, which was originally promised pre-launch before being pushed back for quality standards. Finally, Avowed is now Steam Deck Verified, so if you're a player that enjoys using Valve's gaming handheld, you've got a new way to dive into the world of Eora.
You'll find the full patch notes for this update below. They are fairly lengthy, but admittedly falling short of the epic sagas seen in updates for Hades 2 and STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl.
New Ranger Abilities
- Shadow Step - Step into the Beyond, reappearing behind your enemy. Upgrades will Mark the target, lowering their Damage Reduction and resetting Shadow Step’s cooldown after landing a killing blow.
- Fan of Daggers - Throw a set of poisoned daggers that hit multiple enemies and cause Poison accumulation. Upgrades increase the number of daggers thrown and apply Slow as well as interrupt enemies.
- Smoke Bomb - Throw down a Smoke Bomb, creating a cloud that interrupts your enemies as you dodge backwards out of the way. Upgrades increase damage and deal Elemental Accumulation that matches your currently equipped throwable.
- Chilling Surprise - Set a trap to be triggered by an approaching enemy. The trap deals high Frost Accumulation to nearby enemies upon detonation. Upgrades increase the number of traps that can be set at a time and reduce the Essence cost.
New Ranger Passives
- Concussive Shot - Shooting an enemy’s Weak Point causes them to take increased Stun from melee weapons for the next few seconds.
- Sharpshooter - Deal increased Weak Point damage that scales with the number of consecutive Weak Points you deal within several seconds of each other.
- Deadly Poison - The Poisoned status deals increased damage to enemies. Upgrades increase the amount of Poison Accumulation you deal.
New Fighter Abilities
- Driving Kick - A powerful kick that breaks through enemy Blocks, dealing damage and launching enemies through the air. Upgrades increase damage, adds Explosive Damage, and creates and area of effect.
- Barbaric Smash - Deal a massive blow to your enemy. If that blow kills the enemy, absorb a percent of their current Stun to unleash on the next enemy you hit.
- Deep Breath - Inhale deeply, immediately recovering 100% of your Stamina and temporarily reducing the Stamina cost of your actions by 50%. Upgrades reduce the cooldown, increase the temporary reduction cost of Stamina to 100%, and allow you to refill your Breath Meter while underwater.
- Reviving Exhortation - Revives an ally from a great distance and grants them Temporary Health. Upgrades reduce the Essence cost and heals you and all currently standing allies by a small amount.
New Fighter Passives
- Dual Wield Mastery - Your dedicated training has unlocked a more powerful Special Attack to perform on Stunned enemies while dual wielding melee weapons.
- Adrenaline - When below 50% Health, your Attack Damage is increased by 25%. When below 25% Health, your Attack Damage is increased by another 25% and your Stability is increased by 20%. Upgrades will cause the first lethal blow you receive to leave you with 1 Health and make you Invulnerable for a few seconds.
- Bloodlust - The Bleeding status deals increased damage to enemies. Upgrades increase the amount of Bleed Accumulation you deal and adds additional Attack Damage to Bleeding enemies.
- Vanguard - Gain a chance to negate the damage from an incoming attack. This chance scales with the number of enemies targeting you.
New Unique Items
- Dawnshore:
- New Unique Mace, Spear, Two-Handed Hammer, Wand, Arquebus, and Robe
- Emerald Stair:
- New Unique Two-Handed Axe, Pistol, Two-Handed Hammer, Bow, and Robe
- Shatterscarp:
- New Unique Two-Handed Axe, One-Handed Axe, and Robe
- Galawain’s Tusks:
- New Unique Spear, Two-Handed Sword, and Robe
Enemy Combat Updates
- Several enemies will now be able to use player abilities such as Returning Storm, Ring of Tire, Taunt, Clear Out, Blizzard, and Tanglefoot. Additionally, there are now two different types of barriers that enemies can put up: Physical, which blocks melee attacks, and Magic, which blocks magic attacks.
Community Highlights
- Graphics Upscaling OFF previously used TAA, now it will be properly off. There is now a new separate option for enabling TAA.
- Added 40FPS option to the FPS Limit setting.
- FSR Quality setting now has "Native AA" displayed before the "Quality" option.
- Map information now fills in a larger area around the player.
- Hands no longer clip when opening chests.
- Fixed issue with player not being able to swap the drinks during the "One Last Drink" quest.
- Quest "Shadows of the Past" now updates correctly in the journal.
- Piercing Thrusts description now correctly reflects what weapons it affects.
- Fixed an issue where shooting a bow would block ability Spirit Lance.
- Updated visual representation of enchantment to show that upgrades will replace the base one.
- Fixed an issue where Menu screens and widgets did not register input correctly when another navigation input is active.
- Fixed Thalla's ground stomp attack to better match the size of the area of attack indicator
- Doubled the cap on Ring of Fortune crit chance bonus from 5% -> 10%
Localization
- Added Japanese and Korean language options.
Cooking and Crafting Improvements
- Visual clarity has been improved for the Cooking and Crafting screen.
- Cooking and Crafting in Party Camp uses items from the player's Stash.
- Added indicator for food that has been previously cooked.
- Pressing spacebar now confirms choices in the Cooking and Crafting screen.
UI and UX Improvements
- Added Custom Map Markers.
- Journal and Quest pages now remember your expansion settings.
- Added a new accessibility setting "Change Holds to Toggles/Presses" which changes hold inputs to a toggle or press input.
- The "Auto Track Quests Mode" setting is now set to "On New Quest" by default.
Balance Changes
- Fire blights now do slightly less damage and fire accumulation to the player.
- Reduced damage caused by Vindictive Band on crits from poison.
- Storm Sworn's Thunderous Shot enchantment projectile has had its number of bounces reduced from 3 to 2 and its base Shock Damage reduced from 50 to 25 and has increased stun
Key Bug Fixes
- Fixed issues that could lead to GPU crashes.
- Killing Xaurips in Dehengen's cabin before her quest starts no longer blocks the quest progression.
- All available quest objectives for all maps are now visible regardless of what location the player is in
- Fixed issue where the Bounce upgrade for Wands would cause the player to deal less damage when power attacking.
- Awareness gain for additional enemies is now faster while in combat
- Fixed an issue that caused killed Spider enemies to stay in their original state after activating Arachnophobia Mode.
- Fixed an issue where enemies sometimes blocked immediately after the player broke their block.
- Fixed fire hazards spawned from projectiles from immediately deactivating when near water
- Fixed issue with certain weapons dealing too much damage from accumulation effects.
- Fixed issue where companions could use locked abilities.
- Fixed issue where casting certain spells while reloading caused them to become unusable.
- Fixed issue where successfully using Reflect ability disabled attacking.
- Wizard spells no longer require base essence threshold to cast if their cost has been reduced.
- Fixed issue where enemies lingered in investigation for too long.
Additional Bug Fixes
- Performance and Optimizations
- Improved performance of Arachnophobia Mode
- Fixed performance issue when player uses Blizzard ability when close to water.
- Animation
- Fixed issue where player hands were sometimes misaligned when using Maegfolk Arm Key.
- Fixed issue where player hands were sometimes misaligned when opening chests in first person.
- Quests and Conversations
- Dreamthralls in the abandoned house at the bottom of Eagle's Reach will no longer kill each other.
- Fixed issue with missing dialogue options during conversation with Warden Kosmin.
- Unique items can no longer be bought twice if purchased before destroying Solace Keep.
- Killing Xaurips in Dehengen's cabin before her quest starts no longer blocks the quest progression.
- Fixed issue with conversation with Marius at the Grinning Balarok not starting.
- Dialogue now correctly starts combat with Liviu.
- Sliding into conversation no longer causes Envoy's legs to be detached and obscure player's view while crouching.
- Issue with Player not being able to swap the drinks during the "One Last Drink" quest was resolved.
- UI and UX
- Fixed issue where quest icons for Heart of Valor were not appearing correctly.
- Issues with the objective marker during "Nature vs Nurture" quest were resolved.
- Failing to cast an ability no longer causes the pop-up message to flash multiple times.
- Fixed grimoire spell icons temporarily disappearing in specific circumstances
- Objective marker no longer shows a wrong spot during Chorus of the Lost Quest
- Fixed an issue where text might not fit within the tab on certain languages.
- Fixed and issue where untracked quest markers would show up as tracked on the minimap
- Fixed an issue where height icons on the minimap would point incorrect direction.
- Fixed an issue where maximum text size caused overlap in Settings menu.
- Fixed an issue where multiple waypoints instead of a single waypoint were appearing for quests with multiple objectives outside the current map
- Fixed an issue where currently selected facial scar color does not have a checkmark.
- Fixed an issue where the player was unable to scroll through Quest entries when scrolling to the bottom of any treasure map while using controller.
- All available quest objectives for all maps are now visible regardless of what location the player is in
- Fixed Steady Aim’s requirement level to unlock.
- Effect radius indicator for spells no longer appears under the player character instead of the location that it was aimed at.
- The "Auto Track Quests Mode" setting is now set to "On New Quest" by default.
- Fixed cooking issues where crafting maximum possible servings to cook was not correct.
- Fixed an issue where videos on Ledger Tutorials would not be displayed.
- Fixed an issue where the player is not able to scroll the item's description via controller.
- Fixed an issue where Journal cannot be scrolled up after pressing Read All.
- Fixed an issue where Radial Menu closes instead of going back to previous tab while using the controller.
- Fixed Ledger Map info Panel navigation issue.
- Fixed an issue where Mouse hovering over Ability icon doesn't select it causing spacebar to interact with a different trait.
- Fixed an issue were grenade icon was not greyed out when in party camp.
- Fixed an issue where Menu screens and widgets do not register input correctly when another navigation input is active.
- Quest "Shadows of the Past" now updates correctly in the journal.
- Piercing Thrusts description now correctly reflects what weapons it affects.
- Graphics Upscaling OFF previously used TAA, now it will be properly off. There is now a new separate option for enabling TAA.
- Added 40FPS option to the FPS Limit setting.
- FSR Quality setting now has "Native AA" displayed before the "Quality" option.
- Updated visual representation of enchantment to show that upgrades will replace the base one.
- Art
- Issue with Player character getting stuck in the terrain at Mt. Forja Exterior was resolved.
- Fixed an issue where Corrosive Siphon Green beam was left behind after a creature was hit.
- Fixed an issue which caused the shadow to be missing for multiple head types in First Person.
- Combat and Systems Fixes
- Fixed issue where player was able to apply bleed accumulation to bleed immune enemies.
- Fixed Thalla's ground stomp attack to better match the size of the area of attack indicator.
- Medium-sized Fire Blight's Fire Barrage attack now deals proper damage and applies the correct hit reactions to targets hit.
- Fixed issue of player being able to throw grenades while in Shadowing Beyond.
- All enemies are correctly alerted upon starting combat with them.
- Fixed issue where bullets were able to pass through the Xaurip Shield
- Awareness gain for additional enemies is now faster while in combat
- Added Bleed and Poison immunity to the Ekidian Spirits in Naku Kubel to match other spirit enemies
- Fixed instances in which projectile from Wand weapons would deal damage more than once.
- Fixed issue where the Bounce upgrade for Wands would cause the player to deal less damage when power attacking.
- Fixed issue where enemies were able to jump through a closed gate in the Siege of Paradis.
- Fixed an issue which caused the starting weapon not to appear.
- Fixed an issue which caused the Tanglefoot ability to be unusable.
- Fixed an issue where the "Into the Fray" ability would not pull the enemy towards the player.
- Fixed an issue that caused killed Spider enemies to stay in their original state after activating Arachnophobia Mode.
- Fixed an issue where enemies sometimes blocked immediately after the player broke their block.
- Grimoire will no longer disappear when summoned weapon expires while casting Wizard active ability.
- Fixed fire hazards spawned from projectiles from immediately deactivating when near water.
- Fixed an issue where "Bunch of peppers" can be used as a single vegetable ingredient.
- Fixed a bug that caused wand attacks to push enemies out of Pull of Eora too rapidly.
- Fixed issue with certain weapons dealing too much damage from accumulation effects.
- Fixed issue where companions could use locked abilities.
- Fixed Blight Tank shield regenerating too quickly
- Fixed an issue where the "Equal Footing" enchantment for the Fair Play weapon would not pull the enemy towards the player.
- Fixed issue where casting certain spells while reloading caused them to become locked.
- Fixed issue where Retribution was not being triggered after the player takes damage from spiders.
- Fixed issue where successfully using Reflect ability disabled attacking.
- Wizard spells no longer require base essence threshold to cast if their cost has been reduced.
- Fixed an issue where shooting a bow would block ability Spirit Lance.
- Programming Fixes
- Fixed issue where enemies lingered in investigation for too long.
- Companions will no longer get stuck behind the door to Trial of Strength.
- Localization Fixes
- Gjeda's Journal no longer contains two identical entries while game language is set to Polish.
- Halma's Fancy Item is now correctly translated into non-English languages.
- Malthea is no longer misgendered while game language is set to Russian.
- Other
- Updated Credits to include more members of development
Solid additions, with more to come
All of these updates are nice to see, and I'm especially curious as to how the game balance flows now that enemy behavior has been adjusted and players have new skills to try out.
I'm tempted to give it another whirl, but I'll probably hold off, since the final major update planned for this year as part of the Avowed 2025 roadmap is bringing additional appearance options, New Game Plus, and Photo Mode to play around with.
I just wish some story DLC could be announced as well.
Avowed is currently available on Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC (via Battle.net, Steam, and Xbox PC). It's also included in Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass.
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