One Voice, One Axe, and the Ground Under Your Feet · Crawling Darkness patch notes 2026.09.19-1910

Fighting

Enemies chase and attack you again outside town. A recent build shipped with no navigation mesh - every enemy that noticed you stood still. It is rebuilt and checked in the packaged game before release.
Left click on an enemy attacks it. Left click on the ground walks. Hold the button to keep running and turning with the cursor. Right click and Space are still the explicit attack. The hero no longer swings back on his own when something hits him.
The Cursed Swamp has serpents in it from your first visit - spaced so you meet them one at a time - and enough rats for the errands that ask for them.
The Rotting Peasant has a second attack, a low sweep beside the overhead thrust.
The first bandit you meet carries his cutlass, and drops it.
Wolves sound like wolves. New sounds for noticing you, the run-in, the bite and the death; the old metallic ones are gone.
The hero's death has its own music, and the pack alpha in the Forest of Ash fights to his own track.
Dodging keeps your walk; R no longer walks you down the road; NPCs stand still instead of turning to follow you.
The hero's own pool of light is gone. Torches, braziers and the moon light the world.

You start with the Felling Axe. The townsfolk were right about it all along.
Two new one-handed swords fill the gaps in the sword-and-shield ladder at levels 8 and 16 - the Iron Vein Falchion and the Arming Sword. (Both share an icon with the Sword of the Watch for now; their own are being drawn.)
Every chest in the world is a real chest - iron-banded, hasped - instead of a plank box that looked like a crate.
Five new quest chests: the bandit camp has three strongboxes of its own, and the two on the fortress rim belong to the chapter that asks for them. A chest opened before you accept its quest now counts once you do.
The last chapter of Act One opens at level 18 instead of 21 - that was fifty minutes of grinding with no quest attached.
The four rites pay real experience - 770 to 1,100 - instead of a token 100.
The two skills won in the Broken Fortress are usable when you win them (levels 17 and 18) instead of levels 21 and 23.
Loot from chests lands on ground you can walk to. Fortress floors can drop every armour slot.
Common items can roll one small affix - off by default; a single number in tuning.json turns it on if you want to try it.

Every speaking character is one actor from first line to last. Corvain had been played by five people across his chapters, the healer by two; both heroes have new voices. Every line in the game was re-recorded through a permanent voice per character.
Eleven townsfolk who stood silent now speak - guards, the widow, the gravedigger, the drunk, the pilgrim, the fishwife, the beggar, the other physician.
The forest, swamp and blood-field ambience are four times longer and loop without a seam. The Iron Vein Mines stop playing forest birds underground.
The female hero dies in her own voice.

Armour follows the body - every skinned piece now carries the body's shape morphs, so the tunic wraps the torso instead of standing away from it.
The woman starts with hair (a low knot) instead of a bare scalp.
The hero outline draws only when you are hidden behind something, as a rim, never a filled ghost.
The shadow gate uses the portal it was always meant to - a ring of smoke you can see through.
Hovering the town chest no longer shows a white square. Hair colours in the character creator are back. The character sheet says 'Per swing'.
Six invisible walls at the Broken Bridge stop you walking or being knocked into the gorge; a split standing stone marks the seal chest in the Blood Fields.

The fog west of town is still the old bank; a real comparison is being shot before it changes.
Two swords share one icon until theirs are drawn.
Some ambient particles and the fountain blood can render as white squares on some graphics cards - being reproduced.
The abandoned village's houses are still the town's; their own are on the way, with a surprise inside.
Skeletons are being redesigned; this patch ships the old ones.