Worship : The Awakening of Kessessa – Content Update

It is now spooky season and we are here to provide you with an update about everything regarding Worship right as Halloween is around the corner! We hope you’reready for it because it’s quite a big one. Let’s jump straight into it!

New God to Worship

It is out of the bag now! Kessessa is officially making her way to Worship with a brand new kit for you and your cult. Assist her in her never-ending pursuit for knowledge and be rewarded in kind. 

You’ll unlock Kessessa after having proven your abilities to her.

Gods identity improvements

The gods you can serve in Worship already have a strong identity, through their imposing visuals, unique music and soundscape, goals, dialogues and more. That said, a lot of players have been vocal about wanting more gameplay elements to differentiate your worshipped god and we agreed with that sentiment. To add to the gameplay experience each gods offers through their starting upgrades, ritual and unique building, we’ve now added the following features for each god in the game to make your worshipping experience feel more unique.

Pledging your faith to a god now comes with its unique cantrip. A basic spell you can cast with blood directly from your reserves, instead of drawing on the ground,

The benefits provided by worshipping a god are now unique to that deity. You can no longer acquire the blessing and rituals of the gods you do not serve through catalyst during your runs.

We added even more unique visuals elements for worshipping each gods: the devotion bar, the blood reserve and game-over screen are now themed to the god you serve.

In rapid fire, the section below goes over what each god’s kits entail. Skip ahead if you don’t want spoilers!

An-Ansgaidh Passive Ability: Mercy killing

Apostles of An-Ansgaidh are rewarded for their acts of mercy, notably freeing mortals from their painful existence. Offering corpses as tribute gives some blood back to cultists.

Cantrip: Blood Dart

Casting your basic spell will send forth a piercing dart made of your own blood. This spell can travel a small distance before dissipating.

Starting Ritual: Ghastly Claws

In the same vein (ha) as the Blood Dart, Ghastly Claws are imitations of An Ansgaidh’s own clawed hands. Sending them forth will tear both foes and destructible objects from a distance. 

Cult Building: Sculptor Workshop

A talented sculptor made his home inside your cult base. Bring him catalysts and receive relics in An-Ansgaidh’s image in exchange. These will please your god greatly.

Hubryus Passive Ability: Embrace Madness

Worshippers of Hubryus willingly discard their sanity to devote themselves to the art of rituals. Your cultist has a bigger starting health pool for drawing rites, but takes more damage from enemy attacks.

Cantrip: Chaos Warp

Your basic spell warps the targeted area, damaging foes and healing allies within it.

Starting Ritual: Summon Goopling

Summon a Goopling from the Unseen Depths to fight for your cult. 

Cult Building: Hubryus’ Mutation Hatchery

You can sacrifice your own followers and fuse them in death to summon Folhorrors allies to fight battles for you. These hulking masses of flesh are forces to be reckoned with in battle.

New Content – Kessessa Passive Ability: Knowledge is Power

Kessessa faithful are empowered by the artifacts they study for their goddess. Each relic carried by your followers increases movement speed and cantrip damage.

NEW Cantrip: Cosmic Tear

This spell unleashes a dimensional tear at enemies when cast. This hits at close range, and its range and damage and effects can be upgraded with the Cosmic Attuner. Has a low blood cost.

Upgrade 1: Area of Effect and damage increases

Upgrade 2: Damage increases and now applies the crystalized status effect to enemies it hits

Upgrade 3 (will only be accessible when the third zone is introduced to the game): now breaks shields and deal more damage.

NEW Starting Ritual: Knowledge Mine

This ritual summons a lore sentry that waits for enemies to enter its range. It will detonate, unleashing a devastating and overwhelming mental attack onto your cult’s foes.

NEW Cult Building: Cosmic Attuner

This contraption in your cult base harnesses science and magic to exchange relics of knowledge for a gradually evolving mastery of your Cosmic Tear cantrip. While worshipping Kessessa, you can obtain special relics that are worth multiple relics when offered to the Cosmic Attuner.

New Encounter

Your cult is not alone in the pursuit of the Dark Arts. You might now stumble upon a fellow cultist who requires help in completing an ancient rite. Surely, nothing wrong will come out of it if you help them… Yes? Right.

Test of Faith Sacrifice and Rewards

The first and most difficult part of completing a Test of Faith is slaying the ones who oppose your cult. The newly introduced second part is the most easy one. You must now draw the rites and use the corpse of a powerful foe as a vessel to expand your god influence into the Mortal realm.

And your god will be sure to reward you plentifully.

New Building Types

As a reward for your faith, your god will bestow you an additional building that will help you in your dark endeavors. In addition to your cult expanding its base, you will now receive one of these two buildings after completing your Test of Faith:

Blood Factory

Summoning Mirror

We will leave you the joy of discovering and playing around with them!

As we get closer to the 1.0 version of Worship, we intent to add more of these building into the Test of Faith reward pool. We look forward to the variety this will add to your runs.

Improved Save System

This was a highly requested feature by players on Steam. While we had an autosave feature between phases, players requested a way to be able to save anytime during their run. We’re happy to say we worked hard to bring this much needed improvement as part of this update!

Whenever you need to take a break, you’ll be able to save and quit the game. The game will then remember how many followers you had, which encounters you did previously, as well as keep all your unlocked upgrades. Neat!

Other changes Status effects afflicting the player are now displayed in the UI above the blood reserve, with their remaining duration.

Huntress’ Powershot ability now displays a visual indicator telling you where it will land.

When casting a cantrip, the cultist now turn themselves in the aimed attack’s direction.

Gameplay objects now should never be spawn in unwalkable areas.

Improved impact visual feedback when throwing followers on enemies

Bug Fixes and Optimization Follower lifting objects now have the same speed as their cult leader

Fixed hitboxes for enemies in the second Test of Faith

Upgrades existing in other starting kits are now ignored

Fixed issues with banking multiple relics at the same time

Fixed visual issues with god selection UI

Fixed multiple issues when alt+tabbing

Fixed missing visual feedbacks in Hubryus’ Cult Base when ready to depart for a Test of Faith

Fixed death animation not playing when dying while channeling a ritual

While fighting the Painter’s guards, you can no longer talk to Painter, which makes it easier to grab your followers nearby

Fixed Tendrils of Agony doing no damage if the shape drawn was too small

Fixed status effect with improper duration and tick effects

Fixed poison status visuals

Fixed collision issues with the Boulder Trove

Fixed an issue with the Noxious Shape upgrade

Rewarded devotion when completing encounters with NPCs now has the proper timing

Fixed some navigation issues with controller in the menus

Fixed an encounter variant with broken puzzle solution

Sped up quitting the game

Fixed a bunch of issues with the new content, hopefully saving you the pain of encountering those

What’s next In the next couple of days, we’ll be monitoring how player experience this new update to make sure we can bring hotfixes to irritatting bugs that might’ve slipped through the cracks. Othwerwise, we’ll be communicating an updated roadmap, with more information for what’s to come. In the meantime, enjoy worshipping Kessessa and let us know what you like the most in the update and what you hope to see in the next one!

– The Chasing Rats team