Dev Diary #5 – Update #5 is on its way + what’s next!

Hello Immortals! 

We’re already at the end of 2025, and what a year it has been! We’ve been in Early Access for almost 8 months and your continuous feedback has greatly helped us shape 33 Immortals. We’re incredibly grateful for your support every step of the way, and we couldn’t be more excited to keep building this game with you.

Today I want to talk to you about our next update, coming out on December 9th,  which is packed with community requested features, and give you a tease of what’s next for 33 Immortals in 2026.

But first, let’s take a moment to celebrate what makes this community so exceptional!

Prideful Plays Results

The Prideful Plays event, our community celebration of everything 33 Immortals that makes you PROUD, ran from October 28th to November 11th, and you absolutely delivered. We received an incredible range of submissions: stunning fan art, impressive 3D creations, knitted character renditions, jaw dropping video clips: you gave it your all, and we loved every second of it!

Our Creative Director, Stephan, and our Art Director, Estefania, sat down to pick the 1st prize winner, and shortlisted the 10 submissions who would compete for 2nd prize through a community vote.

We announced the winners and highlighted many more submissions that caught our eye during the TLG Awards (the budget version of the Game Awards) on November 19th.

1st Place:

Congratulations to N00b of the Year, who was picked by our Jury and won a 33 Immortals branded Xbox Series X and a life-size replica of a Crossbow of Pride!

2nd Place:

Congratulations to Snowifer, who had the most community votes and won a 33 Immortals branded Xbox Series X!

And congratulations to all the participants who sent us a submission! We emailed each one of you with your redeem code to get your exclusive Prideful Plays illumination!

What’s cooking in 33 Immortals

Alright, let’s get to what you’re really here for: when will the next update drop and what’s in it? 

Update #5 is coming out on December 9th and will have a high focus on community requested improvements!

1. Teaching players the basics of the Immortals’ Etiquette

There was a time where “What is Empathy?” was the most common community question. This question has long been replaced by the most common community cry: “STOP RUSHING CHAMBERS”.

This made us realise that there was room for improvement in the way we teach players game mechanics. All players will now have access to new Training Rooms that will teach them:

• How to do a run, how to collect resources, how to survive the Wrath of God
• Why is it important to grab a key before entering a Torture Chamber
• How to do Torture Chambers, including teaching them that rushing them will lock a session
• How to win an Ascension Battle
• Why is it important to grab a key before entering a Torture Chamber
• How button-mashing isn’t the answer to everything, by teaching players about Co-Strikes, Dash Combos, Armor and Elite Captures
• Why is it important to grab a key before entering a Torture Chamber

To make the Training Rooms more obvious, you’ll be able to access them directly from the World Selection menu. 

Did I mention that it’s important to grab a key before entering a Torture Chamber?

Oh, and for those of you who were tired of seeing the weapon tutorial checklist every time you changed weapons at the altars, we changed that too: if you want to trigger the weapon tutorials, you can now interact with the Training Dummies. 

2. Trial by fire for new players

We also reworked the First Time User Experience for new players, by completely changing the introduction tutorial: instead of starting alone with Beatrice, first time players will now be added to a real Inferno run (with real players) to get a better feel of what the 33 Immortals experience really is, with all its multiplayer and co-op aspects.

Don’t worry, we’re not monsters, we integrated a tutorialisation of this first run to help players understand core player actions, how to use the map, etc. We feel that this approach will be more engaging and more fun for new players, who will get to actually play with other Rebel Souls in a real run while learning the basics of the game at the same time.

3. Loadout and Archive

Another popular demand from the community was to be able to check their loadout during a run. It’s a handy feature to help you remember what you currently have equipped, and it’s also extra useful for streamers when their community asks about their current build.

In the next update, you’ll be able to toggle a menu while you’re in a run to check: 

• Your stats
• Which weapon upgrades you’re using
• Which Ordeals you have activated
• Which Perks you have equipped 
• Which Relics you wished for that you effectively found

We also added a little extra: Archives! A soulie is waiting for you in Dark Woods, next to Virgil, to tell you all about what you had equipped for your past 100 runs.

Next on our radar: working on a way to let you see what other Immortals in your run had equipped. Stay tuned! 

4. Combat balancing

We realised that Purgatorio’s base difficulty was too high and would prevent us from creating an interesting Paradiso experience (since difficulty increases for each world). 

To give you a little bit of context, we had planned for Inferno to have a base difficulty of 1, Purgatorio of 1.5 and Paradiso of 2. Over time, these numbers had shifted so that Purgatorio ended up having a difficulty of 2. We’ve now come to realize that this is too big a step in difficulty from Inferno, especially considering the more complex attack patterns monsters have in this second region.

We also have to take into account the fact that we have Ordeals and Agony effects now, making Inferno and Purgatorio deadlier. One of our goals with Agony effects is to bring the difficulty of the different worlds closer together, so that experienced players will face a challenge regardless of the world they pick. We noticed that Inferno’s difficulty at Agony levels 3 and 9 was too low compared to Purgatorio’s difficulty with the same parameters. 

With that in mind, here’s what we balanced in Update #5: 

Difficulty modifiers at 0, 3 and 9 Agony:

• Inferno: from 1 / 1.7 / 2.25 to 1 / 2 / 2.5
• Purgatorio: from 2 / 2.35 / 2.75 to 1.75 / 2.25 / 2.75

We also balanced Heavy Attacks for the Bow of Hope and the Daggers of Greed. In the graph below, you can see that the percentages of heavy hits for the Bow and the Daggers are way lower than for the other weapons. 

We’ve made adjustments to make them more viable, by increasing the Daggers’ Heavy Attacks base damage from 120 to 200, and needing only 2 Heavy Attacks instead of 5 to fill out your Greed meter. As for the Bow, returning Heavy Attack arrows from the Bow of Hope will now deal Heavy damage.

The graph also shows that Dash Combos are almost never used: that’s something we’ll want to address later. 

Regarding Perks, we’re constantly monitoring their utilisation and we noticed that some of them are still underutilised, so we gave a little boost to three of them.

Don’t mind the names, they’re internal 😅

• The Perk Merciful Contemplation will now guarantee a rare or epic tier Relic after killing the specified amount of enemies.
• The Perk Blissful Farewell has had its percentages for increasing a Relic’s rarity on reroll increased:
  • Previously: 3%/6%/9%/12%/15%
  • New: 4%/8%/12%/16%/20%
• Lucidos will now drop more Dust when killed.

5. New Chamber Objectives

New Chamber Objectives were introduced in the Pride and Temperance update, with Capture and Destroy. Our goal was to add a little more diversity to what players can do when they enter a Torture Chamber. 

In Update #5, we’ll be adding two more Chamber Objectives: Gather and Escort. 

• Escort: Players will have to defend a group of lost souls from monsters as they try to cross the Chamber
• Gather: Killing monsters will spawn imprisoned souls for the group to collect. Once a set amount of them is collected, the Chamber will be considered won.

Our goal with Chamber Objectives is to add variety between runs, but also from one world to another. In Update #5, Clear, Capture and Destroy can only be found in Inferno runs while Clear, Escort and Gather can only be found in Purgatorio runs. 

We will be monitoring our analytics and your feedback to see how we can adjust or improve the Chamber Objectives in future updates.

6. Many bug fixes and other things

We fixed many bugs, and tweaked things regarding Progression, Cosmetics, Combat, UI and we’re counting on you to share your feedback about these changes and the ones listed above in the Dev Diary! 

Speaking of feedback, we want to thank you for filling out the Pride and Temperance survey. We received a LOT of answers and this data will really help us improve 33 Immortals! 

2026 Tease – What’s next?

Without revealing too much ahead of time, the first half of 2026 is going to be a busy year for 33 Immortals! We’ve already started working on Update #6, which is scheduled for Early 2026. Our team is currently focused on: 

• The Gluttony weapon, which is going to bring a whole new gameplay style to the game
• Further improving tutorialisation, with the addition of Mastery Trainings
• Bringing Private Sessions to 33 Immortals, allowing you to play with up to 32 friends
• Revamping the Meta Progression so the cool unlocks feel earned, rewarding you for specific achievements instead of random level-ups.
• Adding dynamic difficulty to the game, a very popular community requested feature

All of this while still working on Paradiso in parallel, which remains our main focus. We also have other surprises in store: the first few months of 2026 are going to be BUSY, so stay tuned for exciting 33 Immortals news!  

Community Questions

Will we be able to create a party directly in-game someday? 

It’s one of the most requested community features and we’re working hard to make it happen! We can’t promise a date for now, but we can tell you that we’re evaluating options. As soon as we have more to share about this feature, we’ll let you know. 

Will there be a cute gift for the Holiday season? 🥹

Mayyyyyyyyyyyyyybe. If you’ve been around since launch, you probably know us: we’re cooking a little something for y’all to celebrate the Holiday season! Be patient, friends. It’ll come in due time. ❤️

That’s it for today! Update #5 will launch on December 9th and we’re looking forward to seeing you in Dark Woods before the Holiday Break! It’s been a great year and we’re grateful for your support through 2025, and we can’t wait to show you what 33 Immortals has in store for 2026! Thank you for being the sweetest community 🫶

If you have a question you’d like me to cover in our next Dev Diary, let me know via Discord or Reddit! 

Until next time, Rebel Souls!

– Alison & The 33 Immortals Team