Brine Marsh is a full zone

The big ones: Brine Marsh is now a full zone, and the Brine Hag has been rebuilt with her own chamber and a new phase 2. Bosses leave a relic you carry home. Boss fights run past a minute, and blue roots give you the breath to last them. Seals are spent at the Guild’s board now, and the Root garden grows reagents while you’re away. The bench takes orders. The game is fully playable on a controller. The HUD and menus are restyled, and Settings has graphics options. The Spore Canopy’s first creatures are in.

Brine Marsh

• The drowned nave. The floors are a flooded abbey nave now: flagstones under still water that mirrors the room, the crowd and you, with moonlight through the sea-glass windows. Every warning is drawn in the water.
• Its own creatures. The Calamus crawler, the Wrack heap and the Votive have their own models. They react to your lantern: crawlers rear, wracks curl over their pearls, Votives close up and dim.
• The Bog Spitter (one wrack heap in seven, from floor 2). Stand between 2.5 and 6 units from it and it lobs a pearl at you. An ember ring marks the spot, then the pearl bursts for a heart and leaves brine that slows you. Close in and it hunches and won’t throw.
• Tide surges. A lane floods wall to wall every 12 s on floor 1, down to every 8 s on floor 4, after a 1 s warning. Creatures caught in it lose half their health, and those kills count as yours.
• Twelve commissions, from culling 40 to laying the Brine Hag to rest. Kills and streaks now count in any later zone, so moving on never strands one.

New tools and upgrades

• Spark Catalyst. A quarter of the sickle swings that connect throw a spark, which leaps to two more creatures at half strength each jump. There’s nothing to press. It has its own line: Kindled Catalyst, Forked Current and Restless Spark.
• Refining. Pouches of Brine Salt wash up mid-fight, two a floor. Steep a Brine Marsh remedy with a salt and it comes out refined, worth twice as much. The jars keep working while you’re away.
• Treasure caches and essence. Reliquary Lore puts a reliquary casket on every floor. Break it for essence, which buys five Brine Marsh upgrades.

The Brine Hag

Rebuilt. How her fight goes is yours to find out; this is only what changed.

• Her own chamber at the abbey’s sea door. She’s no longer fought in the nave.
• A new model: a drowned crone in torn linen under a veil, 1.3× bigger than before.
• Reworked attacks. They’re all water now, and each one reads from her body before its warning fills.
• A new phase 2, starting earlier, at two thirds of her health.
• Her own sounds and music replace the placeholders.

Boss relics

• A beaten boss leaves a relic where she fell. Press E to take it: that ends the run, opens the next zone, and its story shows on the results.

The workshop

• One bench for everything. The Alchemist’s bench makes every zone’s recipes, and the steeping jars are the refinery.
• Bench orders. Tap E at the bench to choose a recipe, set a quantity or pick Max, then Brew. Holding E still pours quickly.
• Every remedy is its own model in the room, with its own icon.
• New animations: carrying the stack of remedies beside the head, working each station, climbing down the hatch, throwing the flask, and falling when a run ends.

The Guild’s board

• Seals are spent at the Guild’s board now, on licences: tools, Reliquary Lore, Refining and garden beds.
• The Root garden. After Mother Root, the Root bed grows Cellar moss, Bitterroot and Glowcaps while you’re on expeditions. Press E to collect.

HUD, menus and story

• Ink on the dark. The new HUD has no frames: engraved icons, ivory type and hand-ruled bars.
• The new menus are written in ink over the game. The results, the Guild’s board and the controls are pages of a day-book, and the focused entry is marked with a red pen stroke.
• Story in the margins. Each grimoire page you find shows the prioress’s note under it on the results.

Settings and controller

• Three tabs: Audio, Display and Gameplay, with UI scale from 75% to 150%.
• Graphics options: a High / Low preset, frame rate limit, render scale, shadows, water quality and reflections, fog and glow. Low is meant for machines like the Steam Deck.
• Full controller support, with sickle and flask aim assist.