Beta 3 of Demigod is out and a lot of new features are in which also means this will likely be the buggiest beta we’ve done yet.

Here are some highlights:

• Pantheon added.
• Better NAT for Skirmish.
• Torch Bearer has returned.
• His ice spells have changed a good bit.
• Frost Nova reduces movement speed.
• Rain of Ice reduces attack speed.
• When Deep Freeze is used on an enemy that is affected by Frost Nova, Rain of Ice, or Biting Chill, it will consume those effects and deal extra damage.
• Lord Erebus has returned.
• Mist has changed greatly.
• It now drains mana while in Mist.
• It deals damage to nearby enemies and heals nearby allies.
• Queen of Thorns' Spike Wave now vastly reduces movement speed for a short duration.
• Ground Spikes reduces armor.
• If a target is reduced to negative armor, they take additional damage.
• She is now able to Open and Close while moving.
• The Rook's Hammer Slam is now ground targeted.
• Wings of the Seraphim's effect breaks on taking damage.
• Bejewled Goggles will now help players spot objects that are normally invisible.
• Several items now have bonuses for Minions.
• The cost of items has been reduced a bit.
• You should definitely check out the artifact shop.
• Minion Idols now have different amounts of minions they summon and caps.
• For example, a level 1 idol summons 1 minion with a maximum of 2.
• The level 4 idols summons 4 minions with a maximum of 4.
• Plus countless of bug fixes and tweaks.

• ü WIP opening cinematic updates
• ü Fix for minion sliding
• ü Fixes to minions dealing with mistform
• ü Fixes to tooltip calculations
• ü Item fixes, including Twig of life, Parasite Egg, Restorative scroll, war idols.
• ü Balance and stat adjustments to 25 items.
• ü Cost adjustments to 30 items
• ü AI fixes, including Oak, Regulus, Torch, alternate game modes, bat swarm,
• ü Minion targeting
• ü Huge sound and VO triggering polish pass
• ü War rank display fixes
• ü Hardening the citadel upgrade system to prevent lockups
• ü Trebuchet updates
• ü Achievement screen fixes
• ü Range ring display fixes
• ü Targeting reticule fixes
• ü Texture display fixes
• ü Ability cooldown display fixes
• ü Stunned unit display fixes
• ü Stunned cooldown reset
• ü Adjusted summoning progression for yeti, shamblers, idols
• 1: Summon 1, Control 2
•       2: Summon 2, Control 2
•       3: Summon 2, Control 4
• 4: Summon 4, Control 4
• ü Citadel upgrade cost adjustments, reward adjustments
• ü Eliminated double-foul-grasp bug
•       * All Demigods and their minions can now attack air.
•       * Priests can not attack air
• * Artillery no longer attacks air
• ü Steering fixes for zero distance calculations
• ü Fixed particle and texture system leaks
• ü Minion guarding less error prone.
• ü Hammer slam now ground targeted.
• ü Slot count now displays correctly in the join screen
• ü Deeper contrast on unowned abilities.
• ü Selection highlight fixes for AA and multisample backbuffers
• ü Queen weapon no longer damages friendlies
• ü Oak now limited to a legal amount of mana
• ü Flag capture meter smoothing, UI placement
• ü Re-enabled windowed mode
• ü Swapped temp fake decals with permanent real decals
• ü Shared cooldown for teleportation items
• ü New faction art in various menus.
• ü Stored username and password
• ü Changed options echoed to chat in lobby
• ü Fidelity adjustments to skydome rendering
• ü Game options saving hardened.
• ü Demigod selectable by “H”
• ü Queen can transition on the move
• ü Mulch Shambler now deals area damage
• ü Mist and Ooze range rings added

Want to help us?

1) Download DebugView (dbgview) from Microsoft and have it running. It’ll tell you a lot of nitty gritty info about the beta that will likely help us.

2) Run windowed and use the F9 key to look at errors Demigod is running into internally. This can be useful.

3) If you have performance issues, make sure you tell us what OS you’re running, what video card you have, and how fast your CPU is.

4) Look for cheesey artifacts and items that wreck the game play for you. Now’s your chance to tell us where the balance sucks.

5) AI stuff. Have some strategies you think would be helpful for the AI to make use of? Let us know.

And now for a small sampling of the known problems…

- If you are unsuccessful at joining a multiplayer game and hit abort, odds are, next time the game UI will be locked up and you’ll have to terminate the Demigod process.

- While the Pantheon feature is in, it is very very buggy right now. As in, actually getting a pantheon game going is a huge pain.  We expect to make very rapid progress now that it’s actually in but if you’re easily frustrated, you may want to hold off until beta 3A.

- Often times when joining a game the whole UI just disappears when you click join.

- The connectivity still sucks.  It works great in an idealized testing environment but has a poison pill problem that we need to rectify – that is, it only takes one user who can’t connect to keep a game from starting. At least now, you can tell where it’s failing:

- We have a totally killer issue where if anyone plays a game with a map not included in beta 3 (like Cataract) that NOBODY will be able to connect online. We hope to fix this over the weekend. So for now, if you’ve found some clever way to get Cataract to work in beta 3, that’s great but please don’t try to use it.