Dev Diary #4 – The Pride & Temperance Update is live now!

Hello Immortals! 

We’re back with a major update! This one’s about Pride, Temperance, Birds (yes you read that right), Ordeals, Agony, Capturing stuff, Destroying things, and more. I know it sounds like I just threw a bunch of keywords together but I promise it’ll all make sense… eventually. 

Also, we have a community contest with two 33 Immortals branded Xbox Series X and another very cool prize to win so make sure to check it out, just sayin’. 

Alright, let’s go straight to the point and unpack The Pride and Temperance update together!

Don’t like reading? I’ve made a Dev Vlog just for you 💖 Watch it here! 

NEW WEAPON WHEN?

NOW 👇

We’ve been teasing them for a while and they finally made their way into the game: behold, the Crossbows of Pride and the Glaive of Temperance!

One is a ranged DPS weapon with rapid fire, the other is a mid-range melee DPS weapon that will require you to strike at the right moment. Let’s take a closer look at them:

1. The Crossbows of Pride

Like akimbos, but make it medieval: the Crossbows of Pride are your new go-to weapon if you’re into rapid fire and target prioritization. This ranged DPS beauty rewards precision and quick reflexes, dealing up to double damage when wielded skillfully. Plus, as a proud peacock, you get to show off and look amazing in the Beyond.

Fabulous

This one was easy to guess: the Peacock pedestal in Dark Woods symbolises Pride. 

The Crossbows of Pride are the flashiest and the quickest weapons in 33 Immortals (I’d like to say “the most fun to use” but I’m supposed to be unbiased so…). They have a higher skill floor compared to our existing weapons, which is totally intentional! They’re weapons that’ll ask you to commit: everything revolves around their ability, Brand. When used, the player launches a projectile that Brands a target, meaning any follow-up hit deals double damage on the branded target. Brand also allows you to gain Pride, which in turns allows you to throw a spectacular volley of bolts.

We really wanted to lean on the fantasy of Pride: you bet on being able to hit your target, and every time you hit it again you gain Pride, until your confidence is at its maximum and you unleash your most powerful move!

As colorful as the animal they’re themed after, the Crossbows of Pride come with some flashy animations and VFXs. From the start, we knew we wanted them to feel distinct from the Bow of Hope. During early animation discussions, we played around with a bunch of sketches to find the right vibe. A massive, single crossbow looked epic, but we felt the visuals would end up too similar to the Bow of Hope’s posing. So we went in a different direction: two smaller crossbows, with that confident, colorful cowboy energy. It gave off that proud, stylish attitude we were aiming for. Plus, let’s be honest: cowboys are cool.

Crossbows of Pride – Early Sketches

Like I said earlier, the Crossbows of Pride heavily rely on their Ability: Brand. At first, we didn’t really know what the projectile would be, but we knew that we didn’t want it to be your regular crossbow bolt. It had to feel special, just like the weapon.

Is there a world in which the projectile was a tomato? Maybe.

Our intention was to make the connection between the Peacock and the Crossbows of Pride obvious, and the idea to make the player throw a peacock feather to Brand targets came naturally. It felt elegant, but also flashy and perfectly aligned with the Pride theme.

Crossbows of Pride – Ability Sketches

So we chose to really lean into the fantasy of being a proud sharpshooter. In the poses, we emphasized that confident, puffed-up chest and added some fancy spins during the heavy attack charge to capture that flashy, peacock-like flair. We’re super proud (ha!) of the result and we’re very excited to see you try the Crossbows of Pride!

2. The Glaive of Temperance

Temperance: control over one’s acts, thoughts or feelings. Moderation, self-restraint. Designed for players who enjoy being methodical and strategic, the Glaive of Temperance is a mid-range melee DPS weapon that rewards patience and restraint. It’s hard to master: you’ll need to outplay your enemies, wisely manage your Temperance, and strike only when the moment is right, just like the Crane it is inspired by.

I told you we would talk about birds

Cranes are known for their patience and perseverance, often standing on one leg on the water, waiting to grab their prey when the time is right. They can stay still for a long period of time and are able to focus without distraction. These keywords are what the Glaive of Temperance is built on.

When we designed the weapon, gameplay-wise, we thought about what kind of emotions Temperance made us feel, and how they could translate in game in a tangible way. The Glaive of Temperance is all about patience and self-control. It’s the kind of weapon that will reward you for slowing down and being meticulous, and to go even further: going all-in and smashing buttons will even hinder you.

With the Glaive of Temperance, you’ll strike massive slashes thanks to your resource: Temperance. Managing Temperance is at the core of the weapon’s design: you’ll need it to deal massive damage, but when falling under 50% Temperance, you’ll start dealing less and less damage, going as low as -90%. Using your Backstep ability will allow you to refill your Temperance and be powerful again.

And to fully embrace the Temperance fantasy, you’ll have to be careful of your positioning: The Glaive of Temperance is the only weapon in 33 Immortals that has two hit boxes. Hitting with the tip will deal far greater damage than hitting at a close range. Keep your distances, Immortals!

On the animation side, it was easy to find interesting posings for regular attacks but the challenge was to make them different from the Sword of Justice. The trick we used was to take advantage of the weapon’s length and put enough space between each arm to create a satisfying left-right movement.

Designing the Backstep, the weapon’s Ability, was hard because we were limited by the amount of frames we could use. When designing animations for a new weapon, gameplay always comes first: our animators may have the most epic ideas, but if the gameplay feels off, then it’s back to the drawing table. For the Glaive of Temperance, we were working with only 6 frames (not counting anticipation and recovery frames) and it took a lot of back and forth between game design and animation to find the feel vs visual sweet spot.

Glaive of Temperance – Ability Sketches

At first we tried epic moves, but the low number of frames who had to work with made it impossible to fit the whole animation sequence. Instead, we opted for a simpler yet elegant backstep. Plus, working on “Temperance”, opting for a simpler design made sense.

We did add some flashiness with the Heavy Attack though, and that’s because we really wanted to visually differentiate the Heavy Attack from the Light Attacks.

Glaive of Temperance – Attack Sketches

So there you go y’all: two brand new weapons to master. Knowing your track record, I’m sure you’ll find ways to surprise us with crazy builds soon enough!

New Features & Mechanics

1. New Difficulty System: Ordeals & Agony

Rumor has it that 33 Immortals is sometimes too easy… so we’re giving you the possibility to spice it up. Players with a Feat Level 10 or above now have access to difficulty modifiers called Ordeals.

A loooong time ago, a trial by ordeal was a judicial method used to determine a person’s guilt or innocence by forcing them to undergo a painful, unpleasant, or dangerous test.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how guilty are you?

In 33 Immortals, you can now equip Ordeals to gain new abilities, powerful advantages and greater rewards… at your own risk. You’ll start at Ordeal Level 1 by equipping one Ordeal of your choice, and move your way forward by defeating bosses with Ordeals equipped. You can have up to twelve Ordeals equipped.

Equipping multiple Ordeals will unlock Agony Levels, that will give you significant buffs but will also make the Beyond a lot more dangerous. And for the final trial, defeating a boss with maximum Ordeals and Agony Levels will grant you Legendary rewards.

2. Chamber Objectives: Capture & Destroy

The current Torture Chamber objective is to clear the chamber of its monsters. We wanted to vary the gameplay with different objectives: Capture & Destroy.

Chamber objectives are now randomised so you won’t know which one it is until you enter the chamber and see it displayed on your screen. You’ll need to complete the objective to make the Elites spawn in the chamber.

• Clear: Defeat all enemies in the Chamber (your usual vanilla Chamber)
• Capture: Reclaim the Seals of Damnation in the Chamber from enemies
• Destroy: Destroy Effigies of Submission in the Chamber

If all players in the chamber die, the objective will be failed.

3. Armor Break

In a previous Dev Diary, I told you about our desire to make Heavy Attacks more impactful and encourage players to use them more often. The Armor Break mechanic is precisely designed to do that and will be replacing the Stun debuff from now on.

Some enemies will now spawn with Armor, indicated by a new bar above their health. You’ll need to use your Heavy Attacks on Armored enemies until their bar reaches 0 to Armor Break them. Once their Armor is gone, it’s gone for good and Heavy Attacks will damage the enemy’s health bar.

The intention here is to give a specific function to Heavy Attacks by differentiating them from Light Attacks and to add a little tactical depth to combat and builds. As a result, we needed to bring a few changes to some Perks and Relics. You can read the full list of changes in our most recent Patch Notes.

We’ve also added an armored dummy for you to practice on in Dark Woods

Hello

4. Feat Level 15

It would be weird to add so many things to 33 Immortals without adding more Feats so there you go: you can now reach Feat Level 15. Which means that yes, you can now officially unlock the Crown of Immortality. Time to parade in your shiny new acquisition, gamers!

Pretty Stuff

1. Illuminations & Animated Emotes

Everything about this update revolves around showing off (it has Pride in its name after all): you can now collect illuminations to personalise your End of Run screen! Illuminations can be collected as loot during runs from boss chests, a reward for completing Feats or Daily Quests, or by purchasing them from Charon.

I put on my Fall outfit

We also added 12 Epic animated emotes, because they’re cute and fun and we all like cute and fun.

Birb.

The Epic animated emotes can be found anywhere in the Beyond and will appear in the Emote section of your wardrobe.

2. New Paid Bundles

Speaking of Emotes, we’ve also added two new paid cosmetic bundles to the shop, which include the full package: Emote, Halo, Cape, Weapon Skin and Pet.

One bundle is themed after the Pagan symbols of Good Luck: think four-leaf clover, lucky rabbits and bright colours. The other is themed after Pagan Ill Omens: broken mirrors, black cats (the best cats imo) and dark colours.

We had fun designing them and we hope to see you guys walk around the Beyond in your pretty new skins!

When you ignore Lucifer’s shackles during Frozen Hate and get your whole lobby wiped like mere mortals

Community Requests

While The Pride & Temperance Update focuses a lot on new content, we found the time to squeeze in a few popular community requested features:

1. Scaling Lucifer’s Eternal Sorrow

YES, it’s happening! Lucifer’s Eternal Sorrow, the attack that causes the most deaths and despair in our community, will no longer be an all or nothing attack. Just like Lucifer’s other attacks, you’ll be able to partially succeed depending on how many tears you break (that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t focus on the tears when they appear though!) so the attack should be less deadly if you lose a few Rebel Souls on your way to the boss!

• 0 Tears left: All three waves of damage will have a safe zone.
• 1-5 Tears left: Two of the three waves will have safe zones.
• 6-10 Tears left: One of the three waves will have safe zones.
• 11-20 Tears left: The mechanic was failed, no safe zones.

2. Loot Distribution Balancing

When we released Legendary Weapon Skins in Update 3, many of you complained that they were too easy to get, saying that the bosses dropped them on your first try, which made obtaining them not rewarding enough. We’ve adjusted how loot is managed in a way that shouldn’t feel too different, but should make finding a rare or epic reward feel a lot more exciting.

• When receiving loot from the Boss Chest, the game will first roll what rarity of loot the player will receive.
• If there is something of that rarity to collect, the loot will drop.
• If there is nothing left of that rarity to collect, no loot will drop.

3. Quality of Life Changes

We also added a few community requested quality of life changes and a long-time requested accessibility feature:

You can now scroll through menus by holding the input button instead of pressing it (that one was personally driving me crazy and is a welcomed addition!), you’re able to share your findings (chests, shrines, etc.) with your party members while running around the Beyond, and you can now choose whether or not you want to start boss fights with your camera automatically zoomed in or not.

Regarding accessibility, you can change your cursor in the menu and set it to Regular, Big, Contrasted, or Big & Contrasted. Another welcomed addition if you ask me.

I actually never noticed there was a cursor

Community Event – Prideful Plays!

It wouldn’t be a major update without a major community event! To celebrate The Pride and Temperance update and the introduction of two new weapons in 33 Immortals, we’re organising a contest celebrating flair, imagination, and Pride! (Temperance was invited to the party but politely declined, saying that showing off is not their thing).

Because yes, this event is all about exuberance, showing off and being proud!

From October 28th to November 11th 2025, you’re invited to create and share something that makes you proud and relates to 33 Immortals. Whether it’s a jaw-dropping in-game moment (we’re looking at you, people soloing bosses), a beautiful fanart, or even a clever 33 Immortals meme, this is your moment to show-off and flex your pride!

Your creations will be judged by Stephan, our Creative Director, and Estefania, our Art Director, who will pick the 1st prize winner. The 2nd prize winner will be picked via a community vote.

Now on to the best part: the prizes!

• The 1st prize winner will get a 33 Immortals branded Xbox Series X and a real-size replica of one Crossbow of Pride! Whether you’re into LARPing and ready to shine on the battlefield, or you’d rather display it proudly at home, it’s sure to be a real conversation starter!
• The 2nd prize winner will get a 33 Immortals branded Xbox Series X!

And everybody who participates will receive an exclusive in-game reward!

To know more about The Prideful Plays, how to enter, the judging criteria and all the nitty gritty, go to this page.

Community Questions

Is the roadmap up-to-date?

We just released a new roadmap which can be consulted here. As you can see, Paradiso has been pushed back to later in 2026. There are a few reasons behind that decision:

The first reason is that the complexity level of the Paradiso’s boss made us realise that we’re going to need more time to reach the level of polish we’re aiming for.  While it’s true that we’re in Early Access, we still want to release a complete, clean Paradiso that is playable and fun.

This leads us to the other reason: we decided to add new weapons earlier than anticipated. If you were here during our very first dev stream back in March 2025, new weapons were not on our first roadmap, because they were in our post 1.0 plans (that’s why you have empty pedestals in Dark Woods). When we realised that Paradiso would take longer than expected, we decided to bump the weapons up in the Early Access timeframe, instead of waiting for 1.0, to avoid making players wait for Paradiso for a longer time without any significant content to play with. Having new weapons was one of the most requested additions from the community, and while they still require a lot of work, weapons are also a lot faster to make than a whole new world because they involve fewer people in the production process. Combine that to the fact that weapons add significant gameplay variety, bringing them to the game sooner was a great way to deliver meaningful new content while the bigger stuff is still cooking.

We hope you’ll enjoy the weapons, and we’re as impatient as you are to take you to Paradiso. The wait will be worth it, we promise!

Why are you spending time on more community events and cosmetics while you could focus on delivering Paradiso faster?

Our community events are entirely managed by Alison (that’s me, hello!) and Med, the two community managers, and don’t impact development time. Creating new cosmetics, whether it’s for community events or for extra grinding content, is generally manageable in parallel with the production of new weapons or a new world, so whenever someone on the art team is waiting for feedback or approval before jumping on the next Paradiso task, they have time to work on new cosmetics.

So it’s not an either/or situation: while a whole new world (with its environments, monsters and variations, boss and everything else) takes about a year to produce, we’re organised in a way that allows us to create cosmetics too and to give you more customisation options without impacting our schedule.

Are EU and ASIA servers ever coming back?

Yes, that’s our intention. When we announced the closure of the EU server, we mentioned that it’s not gone forever, and the same thing applies to the Asia server. We’re monitoring the current server population on a weekly basis, and we’ll adjust the number of servers depending on our observations. We’ll continue to be transparent with you and let you know as soon as something changes!

Do you have a plan to address the lobby population?

Yes, we’ve been exploring options, including some that were suggested by the community. We’re currently testing scenarios and assessing how the solutions can work while maintaining the game’s fun and balance. While we’re doing our best to address this, it’s also important to note that this is quite normal during Early Access: numbers go up after updates, then settle down after a while. It’s part of the cycle, and it’s also why your feedback during this stage is so important: it helps us keep improving the game and preparing a super solid launch down the line.

What’s next for 33 Immortals? 

Aside from what’s already listed in our updated roadmap, our next update will focus a lot on community requested features and is scheduled to release before the end of 2025. We’re working hard on improving the tutorials and finding ways to teach new players how to behave in the Beyond (rushing chambers = bad!): new Trainings will be added, allowing you to learn basic Immortal Etiquette but also try out perks and weapon upgrade synergies, among other things.

Without revealing too much ahead of time, we also want to further improve the loot distribution system and explore other community ideas, such as the possibility to trade resources. We’ll tell you more about it as soon as we can!

Are you still reading?

Phew, there was a lot to cover! We’re super proud of this major update and we hope you’ll like it too! We can’t wait to see you use the Crossbows of Pride and Glaive of Temperance, discover the other new mechanics we added, and show off your amazing skills during The Prideful Plays! Thank you for reading, and as usual, if you have a question you’d like me to cover in our next Dev Diary, let me know via Discord or Reddit!

Your feedback is as important as ever considering the bunch of new additions to the game so please head this way to share your thoughts about The Pride and Temperance Update, it’s a huge help!

I’ll see you in the Dark Woods, Immortals!

– Alison & The 33 Immortals Team