At long last, it’s time to finally break The Siege of Khor’minos and bring peace to the kingdom beneath the stone.

This is the penultimate dungeon on the Main Story Questline, following up from A Feast For Heroes. In order to begin the dungeon, you must either talk to Calise in Khor’minos and rally the troops she requests or talk to Varena after having finished her bath house dungeon. These are two mutually exclusive paths into and through the dungeon; make your choice based on which of the girls you like (or trust) the most.

Before you do the dungeon, let me say loud and clear: this dungeon is a Point of No Return as the end of the game’s 2nd Act, and beginning it will lock you out of the Winter Wolf and Harboring a Fugitive questlines once you begin. You can’t defeat the cult and then go back in time to cripple the cult; by extension, having done (or not done) those quests, as well as Etheryn’s personal quest The Demon of Ice, will have noticeable impacts on the dungeon. Calise and Varena will both point you towards these cult bases before you begin the quest as a reminder, but I figured I’d make sure it’s here in the announcement just in case. Other quests throughout Act 1 and 2 will remain available.

Author's Note: If you follow Calise's Path through the quest, make sure to go talk to the major factions you've helped to recruit allies. It is possible to have insufficient allies to successfully complete the battle they're heading towards. If you follow Varena's Path, make sure to read the plan carefully. You will Bad End yourself if you do not follow the plan.

The Siege of Khor'minos

• Queen Etheryn, Queen Nyzerrah, Chieftain Arona, Ahmri, Asgeir (or Asynja), and Lumia all have new talks unlocked after A Feast For Heroes, allowing you to recruit their factions’ fighters to aid you in The Siege of Khor’minos. These are used in…

• New minigame added: Mass Combat. If you choose Calise’s path through the campaign, you’ll be taking to the field as the commander of a rag-tag army assembled from across the Marches and heading into battle against the demons. Should you succeed (or otherwise go through Varena’s path, you’ll gain access to):

• New dungeon added: Khor’torhen Fortress! A crumbling ruin that protects one of the waterways leading into Undermountain, now occupied by the Pleasure Cult and their demonic allies en masse. This is the heart of the cult’s war effort, their home base in the Marches and their most important stronghold by far. Take it down, and the siege will break. As you’d expect from any dungeon, there’s a number of new bosses, new weapons, gear, and powers to obtain, and plenty of salacious adventure to be had. 

• Finishing The Siege of Khor’minos now locks out Winter Wolf and Harboring a Fugitive; make sure you do these quests first if you ever intend to.

• If Winter Wolf is failed, Annika will now appear once Act 3 starts and begin the invitation process to Lumia’s castle with appropriate tweaks.

• Isadora, Varena, and Katya all have updated talks after you finish The Siege of Khor’minos.

• New Busts: All the enemies in the Khor’torhen Fortress dungeon.

Post Dungeon New Friend

Pardon me walking on egg shells to avoid spoilers...

In addition to some minor tweaks here and there post-dungeon, the first major character expansion after the fact is already available. By making certain choices at the end of Khor'torhen Fortress, you can allow one of the bosses to walk free with an oath to oppose you no more.

However, it turns out she doesn't actually have a home, and will presently present herself at the Wayfort with an offer: shelter in exchange for her axe-arm.

• After allowing {REDACTED BOSS IDENTITY} to walk free during The Siege of Khor'minos, she'll appear at the Wayfort. You can choose to let her stick around, or send her forth to never bother you again.

• {REDACTED BOSS IDENTITY} has a set of new talk scenes and sex scenes, as you would expect.

• {REDACTED BOSS IDENTITY} can serve as a trainer at the Wayfort, and has repeatable sparring options (which also get you access to edited versions of her hostile sex scenes).

• New CG: {REDACTED BOSS IDENTITY} spreading her legs for your inspection (by Akira).

Hotaru Pregnancy Expansion

We've also got a massive off-season pregnancy expansion for you while we’re chewing through the post-Main Story Quest content. Tobs dropped off a ~300 page Hotaru expansion for us — talk about filling her out.

• Hotaru, another of the kitsune den’s denizens, can now be impregnated. Requires that you’ve already had a child with any of Miko, Mai, Rindo, or Kohaku, have fucked Hotaru before, and have a virile penis.

• Hotaru can now be encountered during the night, which has a number of additional interactions, after her first time.

• Hotaru’s new expansion includes a little shy of 300 pages of new sex, pregnancy scenes, and updated interactions with the new mother.

• Several other den-izens have talks about Hotaru and your new relationship.

Other Notables:

• We've added a BUNCH of new achievements (eyeballing it, increasing the total by about 50%) covering pretty much the entirety of the game's 2nd act.

• The questlog previously stopped tracking The Siege of Khor’minos after the the first of its 4 parts; it now is properly tracked throughout the Siege, and gives way to the next Main Story Quest after it is finished.

• Kasyrra freaking out about you telling her that you’re Soulbound has been progression locked to only occur after The Siege of Khor’minos.

• Kasyrra (as fought in the Winter City) has been buffed to take advantage of higher-level features now being coded into the game.

• The Faceless Blade (as fought in the Grave of Saints) has had her Swift Sword taken away on difficulties below Dark, meaning she’s unable to softlock you into eternal and unending battle if you don’t have the damage output to match her healing. Playing on Dark, we still expect you to have good enough party composition to deal with it.

• Fixed an error that was causing the Faceless Blade’s encounter in the Ring of Fate Investigation sidequest to crash the game.

• Fixed a crash caused by using the Rusty Knife in combat.

• Fixed the Mystic Mischief quest saying Marilla/Vitruvius were ready for pickup when you still had to wait a day.

• Fixed a combat crash when Kiyoko was using her Kangen set and used Laughter of Heaven and Earth on an enemy with no recharge powers

• Fixed Olivia’s pregnancy duration resetting to default length after loading the game.

• You can now use Stonepiercer (a new item from Khor'torhen Fortress) instead of Camping Supplies in the Undermountain mining event.

• New Busts: Sea Wyrm from LivreaQuest.

Now that that's out of the way! A couple of quick notes about what is NOT in this patch:

• There is an ending unlocked by defeating a Certain Boss within Khor’torhen Fortress. It is not intended that the average player will ever achieve this, but it is coded in just in case. In order to avoid spoiling the game’s end early (and also avoid having to rewrite anything since we still have a bit to go before the intended True End), this just results in a developer message saying good job. When version 1.0 releases, this will be updated to fork into the True Ending.

• There is another successful dungeon-end (not game-end, though) which would cause the PC (and potentially Calise) to be transported to another area (in the Coastlands) after finishing the Siege. This will just be marked on your save, and when that secondary dungeon is added in, you’ll get teleported there. In the meantime, you can continue to play your save as normal.

• A couple of important NPCs can be yeeted into your Wayfort’s dungeon; as is tradition, actual interactions with them is something we’ll get around to later. (I hear Fleep’s making good progress on the Dragon Knight from Dracia!)

• Calise suggests a few times during the events that you should talk after the dungeon finishes. Presupposing you and her are still on good terms when the dungeon ends, anyway. This event isn’t in yet; she’s due for a fairly substantial expansion soon and I’ll be saving this set of events to be part of that content drop.

• If you have romanced Varena, after the quest one of the rewards you can ask for from King Kelsaz is her hand in marriage. The event for actually acting on this didn’t quite make it in for this patch, but should be in for next patch.

As for what comes next? Well, Varena's got that follow-up that's making its way through the code pipe, and the game's next (and final) major area, the Coastlands, is mostly done with initial writing and into review.

I've started working on a minor area that's long overdue, meanwhile: Tychris, the City of Glass, a principality in the other direction entirely where Cait's been dying to go since you first found her dad waiting for a caravan there that was never going to come. This is also where the Church of Nareva, goddess of magic, has its regional headquarters, and presents Champions with particular aptitudes in magic and investigation a chance to impress the serpent-deity (and perhaps even an opportunity to join the ranks of her Godsworn).

But first, there's a princess in dire need of saving...